How interoperability improves the healthcare experience

Healthcare information technology is used today more widely than ever. It supports roles across the healthcare landscape, including health administration, patient experience, practitioners, and third-party service providers. It simplifies tasks as varied as medical record keeping, care collaboration, and patient education. But specific technologies vary, and that is a challenge for the industry. Each solution must work together with others to provide efficient, cost-effective care, reliable and timely communication. And if it doesn’t, patient outcomes suffer. AWS collaborated with Xtelligent Healthcare Media and other experts to gain insights and discuss interoperability trends to resolve these challenges.

This blog post provides a summary of the discussion from that webinar, New research: how interoperability improves the healthcare experience.

Healthcare information technology

Electronic Health Records

In 2009, the Health Information for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was passed to promote the use of electronic health records (EHR). Digitalization of health records has several benefits. It replaces time-consuming and error-prone manual data practices. It enables sharing and collaboration among providers. Security of data is imperative, due to the sensitive nature of the information being shared from one endpoint to another.

Technology to improve clinician experience

Current healthcare information technology goes beyond just data sharing. Solutions for improving clinician experience have been developed, resulting in a sharp learning curve with new devices, software, and technique. Adding too many new systems without taking the time to train medical staff can lead to burnout, mistakes, and improper use.

Telehealth

Telehealth is another promising use case that adds to the proliferation of patient and clinician engagement solutions in the industry. Patients who need assistance can receive care without the need for an in-office visit. Telehealth solutions are also used to reach mental health patients remotely without the potential stigma of going to a provider’s office.

The role of interoperability in introducing new healthcare IT solutions

When new healthcare IT solutions are introduced, there are many factors to take into consideration. Considerations such as data migration, employee training, and cost can slow down adoption or discourage providers from changing altogether. Healthcare technology provides clinicians with the tools they need to deliver the best outcomes. Organizations need to overcome the challenges associated with deploying and integrating all the different systems that are used to provide patient care.

Interoperability is the ability to exchange and use information between two or more systems. Consider how important it is for patient data to flow freely between multiple providers, payors, and patients. It enables collaborative diagnoses between multiple specialties. It transmits critical information about allergies and preexisting conditions between care giver and pharmacist. It provides data to populate a user-friendly interface and creates a more patient-centric experience overall. When healthcare infrastructure is interoperable, it provides clinicians with more information about their patients. They can provide a better quality of care, leading to improved health outcomes for patients.

While interoperability is critical, each provider has unique challenges to make to their existing systems to work together. Each organization has different challenges based on the systems they have in place. Choices about which new solutions they pay to deploy and legacy systems that could lack support for new standards can offer challenges. Additionally, integration discrepancies related to mergers and acquisitions can provide challenges. There is no right answer.

Research into the need for interoperability

Xtelligent Healthcare Media conducted research with over 106 respondents pulled primarily from hospitals or health systems. When asked if interoperability was necessary for improving patient experience, 89% of respondents agreed. This is a good reflection of the current healthcare information technology landscape, showing the need to achieve interoperability for improved patient outcomes.

Challenges of implementing interoperability practices

Despite the overwhelming support for interoperability, respondents were aware of the challenges they face when adopting interoperability practices. The respondents said that data accuracy and completeness was one of the biggest challenges they face when exchanging information.

To alleviate other challenges in the adoption process, respondents said that three things have helped them make progress.

• 72% of respondents are hiring more support staff.
• 52% are migrating to cloud-based storage.
• 70% of respondents are increasing IT budget to accommodate for the adoption of interoperability strategies.

Optimizing both EHRs and health information exchange (HIE) services is vital for achieving interoperability. Optimization, in this sense, means high efficiency and effectiveness. It gives clinicians as much access to a patient’s health data as needed, which leads to better outcomes and care. This optimization also requires coordination from all relevant providers for each patient, which can be a challenge.

In the recent Xtelligent Healthcare Media and AWS webinar, experts in the industry discussed interoperability and highlighted trends, challenges, and possible solutions. These experts discussed questions about why interoperability has not been achieved to a larger extent, the current state of interoperability, and future trends.

A callout trend: adoption of real-time data

One key trend that panelists discussed was the adaptation to and the adoption of real-time data. Using real-time data to optimize patient care is becoming more prevalent in the industry. Interoperability is important to ensure that data is being shared accurately and to the right end points. The panel also shared insights about how data quality relates to interoperability. Panelists notes the delicate balance between using structured data to understand a patient’s history and using relevant information quickly during assessment. One leader noted how difficult that balancing act can be, as clinicians must understand patient data quickly before care even begins. Solutions that provide insights based on what is known about a patient are becoming more important to improve care delivery. To listen to the full discussion, watch the on-demand video New research: how interoperability improves the healthcare experience.

Conclusion

Ultimately, interoperability gives healthcare organizations the access to the data their clinicians need to improve the quality of care for patients. While it can be a big undertaking to achieve, those in the industry see the value of increased interoperability and want to continue to adopt interoperability practices. Better interoperability leads to better patient care and is also making it easier for organizations to use their data for research. How can you get more information about improving interoperability across your organization?

Next steps

AWS Marketplace offers solutions created by partners to help healthcare organizations continue to improve interoperability across their environments. Visit AWS Marketplace to learn more about purpose-built healthcare solutions and data sets for the healthcare industry. You can also explore use cases for individual solutions on the AWS Marketplace Healthcare Solutions page.

Watch the on-demand video New research: how interoperability improves the healthcare experience.

About the author

Michael Leonard is responsible for growing the AWS Marketplace healthcare vertical business. His previous role was as a Principal Product Manager on the AWS Storage Gateway team. Over the past 20 years, Michael has progressed through a variety of roles in business development, product management, and engineering at AWS, Commvault, Iron Mountain, Merge Healthcare, and GE Healthcare. He built and managed teams to develop Healthcare IT solutions focused on medical imaging, Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, hybrid cloud storage services, and data protection solutions.