To exchange patient data and other healthcare data across systems seamlessly, electronic health record interoperability is essential. These systems should be able to interchange patient data accurately without errors or slowdowns that hold up the patient's treatment.
The top EHR interoperability solutions help medical providers, healthcare stakeholders, hospitals, and more share information and access patient data without data silos or delays. The right EHR system can help your organization keep track of patient records, improve efficiency, and become more productive.
Benefits of Proper EHR Interoperability in the Healthcare Industry
When EHR systems interchange data, they make it simpler for medical providers and others to collaborate, interact, collect data, and more. This quick access to patient data is exactly what you need to provide the highest quality of care and customer support.
Thus, EHR interoperability is crucial for:
- Patient care and safety
- Better provider care and collaboration
- Increased provider productivity and efficiency
- Data accessibility and patient empowerment
Enhanced Patient Care and Safety
When patients’ data is incorrect or fragmented, their safety is at risk. With EHR interoperability, healthcare professionals in your organization get a more comprehensive look at the patient’s overall treatment history.
When shared between hospital systems and medical offices, care providers can see essential facts, such as the patient’s allergies or the medications they currently take. With this information, medical providers can reduce the risk of medical errors and minimize costs related to duplicate testing.
Improved Care Coordination and Collaboration
When medical providers have all the details about a patient’s care, they can build on the patient’s treatment history by:
- Making informed decisions
- Ruling out diagnosis
- Preventing misdiagnosis
- Coordinating overall better care
Increased Efficiency and Productivity
In a system where information is not interchanged, medical providers may require a patient to constantly fill out the same form or share the same information. They may also order duplicate tests when they don’t have complete or up-to-date information about a patient.
EHR interoperability eliminates this problem by streamlining workflows and sharing a patient’s medical history, improving administrative productivity.
Data Accessibility and Patient Empowerment
Patients deserve to have access to all their information. Yet, it can be hard to collect it all when it’s spread out across multiple providers. EHR interoperability makes data accessibility straightforward, giving everyone with authorization access to complete patient records data.
EHR Interoperability Standards
For EHR interoperability to work, there must be standards in place. Standardized data formats make it possible for data to move between systems without formatting issues or data loss. There are two primary standards to recognize.
HL7 Standards
Health Level Seven standards, also known as HL7, are international standards for sharing, retrieving, and integrating electronic health information.
FHIR Standard
The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard, or FHIR, was developed by HL7. It is designed to make it simpler to ensure security and privacy-compliant data exchanges through a RESTful API approach. This is an approach that allows two computer systems to swap information over the internet securely.
Top EHR Interoperability Solutions
The top EHR interoperability solutions help providers, patients, shareholders, and others stay on the same page and improve their data-sharing capabilities.
1. Cloud-based EHRs
Cloud-based EHRs offer users the flexibility to store their data on distributed servers in various geographic locations, ensuring redundancy and accessibility. With EHRs on the cloud, all providers, patients, or other approved users can access patient information using the internet using the right EHR software.
A benefit of using cloud-based EHRs is their use of advanced cybersecurity options. These security features include:
- Multi-factor authentication
- Firewalls
- Multiple storage locations for the reduced risk of data loss
- Encryption
EHRs are normally offered as cloud- or server-based options. Cloud-based EHR options provide excellent accessibility with the benefit of reduced capital investment and fewer overhead costs.
2. Open Application Programming Interfaces (API)
APIs facilitate seamless communication between disparate applications and systems, enabling the secure sharing and exchange of data, including protected health information (PHI), between electronic health records (EHRs) and various health information technology systems.
APIs promote interoperability thanks to standardization, which makes it much easier for varied external systems to communicate with one another and exchange data. With industry-standard APIs, it’s possible to keep EHRs compatible with a number of apps and services from external vendors.
3. Retest IT Resources
Retesting IT resources helps you figure out the source of data silos. And when interchanging data between systems is causing issues, it’s time to re-evaluate your IT resources and ensure interoperability solutions in healthcare on four levels:
- Semantic: The ability for systems to transfer, exchange, interpret, and use data from other systems.
- Foundational: A system’s ability to send patient health information to another.
- Structural: The system’s ability to interpret information at a data-field level.
- Organizational: Governance, policy, and other legal considerations used to help transfer data in a secure, seamless, and timely manner.
For a smooth IT experience, these four levels must work together effortlessly. So, it’s vital to adopt standards, such as HL7 or FHIR, to ensure appropriate training and education for your staff members. These standards also help to create clear policies for collaboration and data sharing.
4. Blockchain for Network Provider Identification (NPID)
The blockchain is an immutable and transparent digital ledger that operates in a decentralized manner, recording transactions permanently and ensuring their authenticity and verifiability. For EHR purposes, the blockchain identifies and validates the healthcare providers within a shared network. The decentralization of blockchains allows providers to store their unique identifiers as well as other pertinent information, such as credentials, with fewer security risks.
5. Standardization of Data
EHR interoperability allows data interchanges to occur seamlessly by requiring standardization. To facilitate electronic data interchange, your organization should adopt standardized data sets, such as HL7 and FHIR. Standardized data is easier to maintain, less likely to be corrupted during transfers, and quicker to understand, making it possible to give all patients a better experience. Additionally, standardization makes it easier to collaborate, complete large-scale analytics, and more.
The Ultimate Solution: 4medica
4medica is the ultimate solution, providing a data quality platform that truly makes “one patient, one record” possible. Our health data quality solutions improve data accuracy with automated intelligence and real-time data analytics. Plus, we guarantee a 1% (or less) duplication rate.
Our scalable solution helps to bridge the gap between health information exchanges, hospitals, health plans and accountable care organizations, labs, and much more. So, if you’re ready to workshop EHR interoperability solutions for your healthcare organization, chat with our team to get started today.
