John Nebergall

Across the country, healthcare leaders are ramping up IT investments, especially around interoperability. But they often forget that the most important technology an organization can possess to ensure interoperability is the right integration engine. Without a clear view of the functionality needed, hospitals will struggle to support advanced data-exchange goals.

Despite tremendous progress toward healthcare information sharing, barriers to healthcare data access and exchange continue to exist. These include interface issues that make it difficult to send and receive information in the right format so that disparate systems can interact and “talk” to each other in the same language. This is especially true when information is received in an unstructured format that prevents actionable interpretation. 

Yet many organizations lack direction around how to evaluate their integration engine’s capabilities in a rapidly evolving environment. It’s a challenge that prevents them from making game-changing progress toward interoperability. It also holds them back from leveraging their data to improve quality of care.

To determine your organization’s interoperability readiness, start by assessing your systems that interact with patient data. Are they updated and ready to accept data in any format? Do they require availability testing to ensure continuity of care? Once this has been determined, the next step is to check the capabilities of your data integration engine. Compare it with new integration platforms on the market to assess compatibility with multiple systems. This will help determine if your platform is primed to meet the integration needs associated with new technologies or if it is time to invest in an integration engine that can handle both your existing and future interoperability goals. 

To help make this determination, the following standards should be taken into consideration:

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