Healthcare interoperability is crucial today, as new technological advances started emerging in the healthcare marketplace. Interoperability in healthcare enables different information technology systems to communicate and exchange usable data.

This allows providers to have access to all data for a patient being treated. The main idea behind the healthcare interoperability is the health Information exchange for better patient experience and quality care. In this article, we will discuss how healthcare interoperability benefits patients and providers. 

Healthcare Information Exchange

Health information exchange commonly involves the exchange of all the health data, which includes medical records, test results, clinical summaries, medication lists, and much more. Nowadays, healthcare providers and organizations are doing an amazing job of using Electronic Health Records to make interoperability more convenient than ever.

But still, there are some gaps in accessing the required health information more accurately at the point of care. Lack of needed information at the point of care will result in more time on obtaining the information rather than patient care. So here prioritizing healthcare interoperability plays a great role in exchanging and using health data cohesively.

Healthcare Interoperability Benefits For Patients

From the patient’s view, the effective management of their health means interfacing with physicians, pharmacies, health clinics lab, insurance companies, and more. These separate entities need to communicate the patients’ information amongst themselves and then back to the patient. But actually, it is a time-consuming process to talk with individual healthcare specialists.

On specific events, patients may even end up acting in a real sense as a messenger by getting a CD loaded with x-rays or scans from one specialist to take over to another.

However, if these healthcare organizations are using interoperable systems that are capable of interacting with each other, they can access and share patient health information more easily. Furthermore, the patient may have the option to sign in to an online “dashboard” and see messages with their appointment reminders, test results, physician messages, prescriptions, and more.

Healthcare providers who offer this degree of accommodation are situating themselves to be at a distinct advantage with health care consumers who are searching for preferable quality care.

RELATED: HERE’S HOW INTEROPERABILITY CAN IMPROVE PATIENT CARE

Benefits of Healthcare Interoperability for Providers

Not only patients but also providers benefit a lot from the healthcare interoperability. The accurate healthcare information exchange between the physicians, clinics, and payers is a great task today. These time-consuming ways of passing data back and forth are unwieldy and can invite errors. Even some of the more common digitized methods of exchanging records (through PDFs, for instance) are quite cumbersome because they require manually opening the file and locating the relevant information therein.

As data sharing becomes more standardized, healthcare interoperability systems make it very easier to search and share accurate patient information. It allows health care professionals to focus their valuable time on actual care rather than documentation and time-consuming paperwork. Apart from these, the interoperable system reduces the medical errors that might result from a mistake in manual health data entry of patients. 

Moreover, the embrace of interoperability is now opening some intriguing new doors for healthcare organizations. For example, one incredible part of interoperability is having clinical gadgets communicate with one another — this includes patients who are utilizing wearables or monitoring equipment at home. There are likewise energizing prospects in how AI and machine learning could likewise oversee and use the information in healthcare interoperable systems to eventually give better healthcare.

RELATED: PRIORITIZING YOUR HEALTHCARE INTEROPERABILITY : EXPERT’S GUIDE

What problems interoperability can solve for your practice?

1. Patient Identification is made easy with healthcare interoperability:

The biggest challenge for today’s healthcare providers is identifying specific patient health information easily. There is no consistent way of identifying a patient across the healthcare spectrum. But with the adoption of a healthcare interoperability system, healthcare providers can easily able to identify the patient data by their name, date of birth, and security number (if possible). This will also reduce your practice valuable time and help you to concentrate more on patient care. 

2. Health data standards create a better connection

Without considering interoperability, it is difficult to simply share information from one EHR (Electronic Health Record) to another. But with the adoption of health data standards by enabling interoperability between different electronic health record systems can connect the whole healthcare spectrum.

RELATED: FHIR: A NEW PATH TOWARDS HEALTHCARE INTEROPERABILITY

3. Your practice measurement and improvement is possible with interoperability

Interoperability brings in point to point communication within the system. It helps to analyze problem areas and make changes or even monitor how those changes can improve the quality of care and patient outcomes.

Final Thoughts

Healthcare interoperability is creating great opportunities for healthcare organizations to share, access, and exchange health information easily and more accurately. Even though interoperability holds certain challenges like implementation cost, technical complexities, integration challenges, and staff training, Interoperability allows for a more patient-centered form of care, which creates huge benefits for patients and also for providers. 

Looking for the right way to achieve healthcare interoperability for your practice? We CapMinds help you to improve your clinical data exchange process with our best interoperability solutions.