Interoperability in the Healthcare Network Blog Post Week 8

This week I am going to focus on interoperability. Currently this is a big issue not just for health care as a whole but including the armed forces. “Interoperability means the ability of health information systems to work together within and across organizational boundaries in order to advance the effective delivery of healthcare for individuals and communities.”(Healthcare Information and Management System Society, 2017). Basically, different systems need to be able to communicate to each other. Say for example you visit a hospital in Florida, and then later in the year you go to a hospital in Nebraska that is on a different healthcare network, there needs to be a system in place that can allow the Nebraska hospital to pull those records.

Interoperability is not easy. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), created an interoperability roadmap in 2015. This April, they released a proposed interoperability standards measurement framework and are requesting feedback “to evaluate progress so far by healthcare sector stakeholders - including health IT vendors, healthcare providers and health information exchange organizations - in implementing and using standards facilitating health information exchange now that electronic health record use is widespread.” (McGee, M. 2017). Being able to do create interoperability makes access to patients’ records for healthcare much simpler.

The ONC is also creating a competition to create an algorithm for patient matching. Patient matching describe the techniques used to match the data about you held by one health care provider with the data about you held by another (or many others). (Posnack, S. 2017). They are awarding 6 cash prizes worth a total of $75,000. First place would gather $25,000. If you are interested you can enter at: https://www.patientmatchingchallenge.com/challenge-information/challenge-details.

Interoperability is a must. In the military you need all services to be able to communicate with each other. The same should apply to medical records in my opinion. With that being said it does bring another risk to security. By gaining access to one network, the perpetrator would be able to access any medical information from anywhere. In my opinion though, the benefit of having an interoperable healthcare network is much greater than the risk of compromise.

References:

Healthcare Information and Management System Society. (2017). Retrieved from: http://www.himss.org/library/interoperability-standards/what-is-interoperability

McGee, M. (2017). ONC Seeks Help Measuring Interoperability Progress. Retrieved from: http://www.healthcareinfosecurity.com/onc-seeks-help-measuring-interoperability-progress-a-9879

 Posnack, S. (2017). Demystifying Patient Matching Algorithms. Retrieved from: https://www.healthit.gov/buzz-blog/interoperability/demystifying-patient-matching-algorithms/