Question

Conduct a literature review on interoperability in health care.  

- Describe the progress that has been made to date?

- What challenges lie ahead?

- How do you think we may overcome these challenges?

Review before you begin Chapter 3 of Health care Information Systems (Third Edition) by Wagner, Lee and Glaser.

Answer 1

In health care, interoperability is the ability of different information technology systems and software applications to communicate, exchange data and use the information that has been exchanged.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE INTEROPERABILITY? It makes the health care easier for medical service providers to share patient information and makes more efficient from avoiding orders for abundant patient tests to help specialists to communicate with reffering doctors.

PROGRESS IN INTEROPERABILITY IN HEALTH CARE: The evolution of interoperability in health care focuses to determine how patient information is exchanged in the future. A core objective of the national health care information technology strategy is the free flow of patient information across organizational, technology and geographic boundaries. It also encompasses the flow of information between personal health records, public health agencies, health plans and organizations conducting clinical research. There has been some progress in advancing interoperability from 2014 in collecting electronically patient health information from external sources.

HOW TO OVERCOME CHANGES IN INTEROPERABILITY OF HEALTH CARE? The challenges in interoperability in health care is to cater optimal care delivery and to improve patient health outcomes. To overcome these challenges the interoperability in health care a) should develop and enforce a standardized way of identifying patients b) health IT interoperability should enforce standards across care settings and related facilities c) should enforce industry-wide interoperability measurement standards d) should coordinate with others acorss the organization to meet the targets and e) should block information and data that results in prevalent health data exchange.