Healthcare Interoperability Improves Care and Patient Experiences

What Is Healthcare Interoperability?

“Healthcare interoperability is the way we can instantaneously exchange information between IT systems such as electronic health records,” says Dr. Patrick Guffey, chief informatics and outcomes officer at UCHealth in Colorado.

With complete visibility enabled by interoperability, healthcare providers can avoid having to order tests already completed or delay care as they try to track down a patient’s medical history and records.

Whether patients move across healthcare organizations or have years-long journeys within the same organization, interoperability allows providers to obtain all of the information they need to give their patients optimal care.

HL7 FHIR: Understanding the Standard Shaping Data Exchange

Among the various standards shaping healthcare data exchange, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources is one of the most widely used. FHIR (pronounced “fire”) was developed by Health Level Seven International, a global standards organization.

FHIR allows different systems, such as electronic health records (EHRs), to exchange healthcare information electronically, regardless of the ways various systems store that information.

FHIR, Guffey says, “enables applications to communicate and know what they’re sharing with each other.”

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How System Interoperability Directly Improves Patient Outcomes and Care Experiences

According to a recent CDW white paper, care remains deeply fragmented for both patients and clinicians.

And the problem is pervasive. In a survey of over 2,000 physicians, only 8% said it was very easy to use information from different EHR systems.

Interoperable systems lead to more coordinated and integrated care, the CDW paper notes. Patients can transition efficiently through each step of their care journey, from admission to discharge and follow-up care. And solutions such as endpoints integrated with EHR ensure that clinicians have accurate information wherever they provide care.

“To understand the full scope of a patient’s healthcare history, it’s critical to have seamless interoperability between systems,” Guffey says.

Interoperability improves care by making patient information easily accessible not only to healthcare teams but also to patients themselves. When patients can see their own medication lists, medical notes, and past and future visits all in one place, they become informed and active participants in their own care.

“We empower patients to see their own healthcare information,” Guffey says.

Why Interoperability Is the Foundation AI and Data Initiatives in Healthcare Require

Patients are accumulating ever-growing amounts of information, such as hospital admissions reports, lab results and outpatient follow-up visit summaries. “That information is beyond what a human can reasonably be expected to process,” Guffey says. 

With interoperability as its foundation, artificial intelligence tools can access and quickly summarize large data sets. AI also can provide links to its sources so that humans can review the output, checking for accuracy and completion.

NVIDIA is currently developing computing architecture to enable AI agents that can not only summarize data sets but also analyze them to make informed recommendations.

Various AI subagents will each handle specific areas of care, such as radiology or surgery. Those subagents will then communicate with a larger, overarching AI agent that can act “more like a human who’s making a decision,” says David Niewolny, director of business development for healthcare and medical at NVIDIA.

“In the agentic future of the hospital, AI agents no longer are just AI tools generating output, they’re generating output and taking action,” Niewolny says.

What’s Still Blocking Seamless Data Exchange

A proliferation of systems poses a key challenge to seamless data exchange. While these offerings provide more ways to access healthcare information, they don’t all communicate with each other.

“We have lots of different vendors developing their own systems with their own code,” Guffey says.

Another challenge involves differing data definitions. Different uses of medical terms among healthcare providers can create differences in the data — differences that can magnify over time.

To address this, healthcare organizations need strict data governance across systems to ensure data hygiene. They also need to conduct data training.

“We want to educate our care team members to make sure we’re all using the same up-to-date definitions and standards so that information flows clearly,” Guffey says.

Steps Health Systems Can Take Now To Advance Interoperability Maturity

As board chair of Contexture, the largest health information exchange in Arizona and Colorado, Guffey advises healthcare institutions to participate in the electronic exchange of healthcare information across organizations. “Release information freely,” he says.

Healthcare organizations also can advance interoperability, and agentic AI in particular, through change management, Niewolny says. “Acceptance and comfortability take time.” He advises health organizations to begin piloting agentic AI tech. 

Finally, “release as much information to the patient as you possibly can,” Guffey says. “Patients will tell you if something in there is not accurate. Involve the patient because, ultimately, the whole point of health IT is to improve the lives of our patients.”