The state of interoperability

Mary Stevens, Editor

CMIO.net has been offering a glimpse at some of the results of our first-ever Top Trends/CMIO Census survey this week, in honor of the fifth-annual National Health IT Week, which is happening in Washington, D.C. Interoperability has been front and center at this weeklong event and our survey results reflect that focus among CMIOs in the field as well.

For example, survey respondents frequently cited systems and data integration and interoperability standards—for all providers and payors—as areas where additional HITECH funds (if they become available) should be spent. And a majority of respondents said more funding would be necessary to ensure that HITECH reaches its goals. Some respondents also said data exchange and interoperability were the biggest challenges to achieving HITECH success in their own healthcare organizations.

Without revealing too much more of our results, most of the survey participants said they have implemented, are implementing or plan to deploy CPOE, a variety of clinical information systems and decision support tools by 2011, and participate in or plan to participate in at least one HIE. (If you want the hard numbers behind these results, our extended survey coverage will appear in the July issue of CMIO magazine and online at CMIO.net.)

Nearly half our survey takers said they work in multi-hospital organizations or health networks. You don’t need to read between the lines to understand why interoperability and integration are on many CMIOs’ minds midway through 2010, as we await the final word on the proposals for meaningful use, EMR certification and standards efforts.

As outlined in this month’s top stories, open standards mean open source and proprietary systems needn’t be opposing forces as the tools for system, device and data interoperability evolve. The federal efforts in this area are broad enough to accommodate a range of “good enough” technologies that enable data exchange among systems. Vendors including Cardinal Health, Etiam and others are just the latest to offer products that help the devices in the integration puzzle fit together. If interoperability is the end goal, it’s no less important to enable interoperability without forcing organizations to abandon their existing systems investments and start over.

Integrating mindsets might be more difficult, but imaging informatics and enterprise hospital IT need to work together, learn from each other and leverage a variety of expertise to improve care, said Paul Chang, MD, vice chairman of radiology informatics at University of Chicago Medical Center during the Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine’s (SIIM) recent conference.

Mary Stevens, Editor
mstevens@trimedmedia.com