“There is definitely a sense of expectation. We need to move things forward with interoperability,” said David Cassel, senior interoperability engineer for Epic Systems, speaking at the Health Care Innovation Day, a joint event hosted by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the West Health Institute.

For interoperability standards to be successful, “we have to build incrementally,” said Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD, chief science officer for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. “The systems we install today are the legacy systems of tomorrow. We need resilient ways to make sure standards support what we have now and in the future.”

“You have to be grounded in the things you want to accomplish. It has to be incremental over time,” said Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD, chief science officer and director of the Office of Science & Technology, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), in summarizing his agency’s take on interoperability.

“Americans would be surprised the degree to which treatment took place in the absence of relevant information to deliver treatment,” said Michael H. Schatzlein, MD, Tennessee/Indiana ministry market leader of Ascension Health and CEO of Saint Thomas Health, speaking during a panel discussion at Health Care Innovation Day on Feb. 6, a joint Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and West Health Institute event.

Nurses spend 35 percent of their time transcribing information from machines instead of focusing on patient care. Meanwhile, patients with chronic conditions rely on devices that do not talk to each other, while their providers often lack software to analyze their data. These challenges and more highlight the pressing need for greater interoperability, according to speakers at the Health Care Innovation Day on Feb. 6—a joint Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and West Health Institute event.

Surgical errors occur more than 4,000 times a year in the U.S. 1; at least 39 and 20 times per week, respectively, surgeons leave foreign objects, such towels and sponges, inside their patients, perform the wrong surgery, or operate on the wrong body part.2 A game-changing data interaction tool debuting at HIMSS14 gives healthcare providers a new solution to address these challenges.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), one year into the Medicare Accountable Care Organization (ACO) initiative, a little less than half (54) of the 114 participating organizations have achieved savings and of those, just 29 saved enough money to receive “shared savings” bonuses. In addition, an in-depth savings analysis for the 29 participating Pioneer ACOs showed that nine achieved significant savings while also scoring high quality metrics.

Basketball great Shaquille O'Neal has been working with technology company Qualcomm to learn how mobile health can improve care and cut costs.