I am looking forward to the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) meeting this year. From my vantage point, interoperability is at the forefront. There are literally thousands of vendors present. The incredible display of varied and new technologies only serves to underscore the ever-deepening silos of medical information.
The HIMSS Interoperability Showcase is one venue to see Information Exchange in progress, but in my opinion, it represents only the fledgling state of what is needed to serve the day-to-day workflow of a busy practitioner.This year will be an important milestone for healthcare IT, and interoperability in particular. There is so much buzz about “the stimulus” and “meaningful use,” and one feels as if we have finally overcome the coefficient of friction needed to push EMR adoption (finally) into widespread use.
When talking to hard-nosed, daily grind, community physicians, they remain extremely skeptical of receiving a single penny for IT adoption. More importantly, they worry that physicians and hospitals will adopt IT to “get the checkboxes” for meaningful use, but no great improvements in actual patient care will result.
Much of this has to do with a compelling need to practice connected healthcare—a need to improve collaboration and act as a true care team without walls. Additionally, a population oriented approach to chronic disease management is becoming an ever increasing priority. However, to accomplish these noble goals, overworked and often underpaid physicians demand tools to markedly improve efficiencies in work-flow, communication, and “closing the loop.”I know that it seems as if I continually beat the dead horse of semantic integration on this blog, but I will again stress that a complete and clinically relevant presentation of data must be the foundation for managing the increasing complex transitions of care that we are seeing in healthcare today.
So if you are attending HIMSS this year, try not to observe these wonderful, yet disparate technology jewels, shining as individual displays; instead try to see the bigger picture and imagine them dazzling vibrantly together. Interoperability as a technology will play a role, but cooperation, and acceptance for change will ultimately lead to a sum greater than its individual parts.
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