Interoperability drives HIMSS13
It should come as little surprise that interoperability was a major focus of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) 2013 annual convention. Advances in so many other initiatives—Meaningful Use, information exchange, patient engagement and more—depend on interoperability.
To lay the groundwork for interoperability, patient-centric healthcare and health records must have standards, testing and certification, said Judy Murphy, RN, deputy national coordinator for programs and policy at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). The goal is to facilitate broad implementation of health information exchange (HIE) and to engage patients by enabling patients through access, action and attitude.
Interoperability through HIE is growing, she said. For instance, three EHR vendors (Cerner, eClinicalWorks and EPIC) are each exchanging millions of patient records per month. The New England Healthcare Exchange Network has 200,000 directed exchanges per month. HealthBridge in Ohio has 3.2 million directed exchanges per month. In general, many integrated delivery networks and hospitals are spearheading exchange, and there is rapid growth in exchange supported by the State HIE program.
“The next stages of Meaningful Use criteria will step up the interoperability expectations,” said Murphy, such as e-prescribing, transition of care summary exchange, lab tests and results, public health reporting and registry participation.
During his keynote address, National Coordinator of Health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, said the shared challenge this year is the exchange of information. “Does it get from where it is now to over there? Interoperability is not the same thing at all. Interoperability is when you get information can you understand it, can you use it, can you incorporate it into your own information?”
Despite the successes to date regarding adoption of health IT, only 24 percent of hospitals are exchanging clinical summaries with outside hospitals. “This is not where we want it to be. Twenty-four percent is nothing to celebrate even if it’s triple what it was three years ago. It’s not good enough and we’re going to change this.”
Mostashari said he visited the Interoperability Showcase which first debuted at the HIMSS convention in 2006. The forum highlights the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise's common framework, and brings solution providers and decision-makers together in an interactive environment where attendees can become the patient in a clinical use case scenario and watch their health data move from system to system. He said he was very impressed with this year’s showcase.
How do you feel about the updates and predictions regarding interoperability shared at this year’s convention? Please share your thoughts.
Beth Walsh
Clinical Innovation + Technology editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.