Enhancing Interoperability and Data Sharing with Innovative Technologies and Standards

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There are a lot of components to consider and talk about in regards to interoperability and data sharing. The inventive ideas and possibilities of where it can go and what it could do, the rules and regulations surrounding this area of healthcare, the privacy and concerns, etc. Today we are going to focus on the innovative technologies and standards that are currently being employed to make our dreams of a better system of interoperability and data sharing a reality.

We reached out to our brilliant Healthcare IT Today Community to ask, what innovative technologies and standards are being employed to enhance interoperability and data sharing, and how are these advancements influencing the accessibility and quality of healthcare services? The following are their answers.

Marlena Herrera, Director, Customer Success at Protegrity
The alignment and culmination of technologies and standards to address interoperability and data sharing will improve the ability of providers to provide quality healthcare services to their patients. Some of these technologies include the ability to meet and adhere to privacy and security requirements, such as HIPAA, through data security and privacy technologies that allow for consistent data protection across QHINs to allow for the exchange of EHI. This allows the ability to analyze data in a protected state without exposure to individually identifiable information so that data scientists can arrive at an understanding of correlations for specific health scenarios and determine probable outcomes responsibly. Leveraging this type of approach increases advancement and influences the improvement of the quality of healthcare services.

Don Rucker, Chief Strategy Officer at 1upHealth
The entire digital app world is powered by APIs, which allow computation on individual data fields – your check deposit amount, real-time weather, and your seat on the airplane. The ONC Cures Act APIs and the companion CMS Access APIs all require these modern FHIR-based technologies and are fundamentally designed to grow a vibrant digital health economy providing choice and value to consumers. These API protocols are known and used by hundreds of thousands of developers. In contrast, TEFCA by design uses an ancient communication protocol and largely non-computable data (a CCD document that would need to be parsed every time). When combined with cumbersome at best network dynamics, TEFCA will not have the real-time performance expected of modern apps even if a programmer could somehow sort out the baroque protocols.

Sally Else, President at Mphasis Javelina
FHIR and SMART on FHIR apps have been adopted at a large scale by many healthcare organizations for interoperability and data sharing. Additionally, health information exchanges/networks have also helped in data sharing among chains of hospitals or partner payer/provider entities. This did work very well in removing redundancy, bringing efficiencies, improving timelines of healthcare delivery, and patient satisfaction within narrow networks like HMOs/ACOs, etc. However, when it comes to national networks or PPOs, data sharing has been very limited even with a push data request from the patient. TEFCA exchanges pave a way for sharing of data among broader national networks and scale up the successful local model of interoperability which has worked in the last few years.

Hans Buitendijk, Public Health Workgroup Chair & Executive Committee Member at EHR Association
The focus of technologies and standards centers strongly on internet-based APIs that provide more dynamic access methods, from querying individual data elements to large data sets to addressing complex cross-entity workflows, such as prior authorization workflows. HL7 FHIR is the primary standard enabling these advances beyond the more limited capabilities supported by “classic” standards. Now, technologies and standards are enabling new and wider data-sharing requirements, while the use of national-level common data-sharing agreements takes much friction out of the ability to rapidly connect with other exchange partners. Such agreements have expanded in scope from local arrangements to state, geographic, and national coverage that started with NHII/NwHIN – now eHealth Exchange – and has since expanded even further with TEFCA.

Laxmi Patel, Chief Strategy Officer at Savista
Innovative technologies such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI) are being employed to enhance interoperability and data sharing in healthcare. FHIR enables seamless data exchange by providing a standard for electronic health records (EHRs), while blockchain ensures secure and transparent transactions. AI facilitates data integration and analysis, improving clinical decision-making and personalized care. These advancements are significantly influencing the accessibility and quality of healthcare services by enabling real-time data access, reducing errors, and fostering coordinated care across various healthcare providers and systems.

Sandra Johnson, Senior Vice President, Client Services at CliniComp
Innovative technologies such as AI and advanced EHR systems are being employed to enhance interoperability and data sharing, normalizing disparate data elements for seamless integration. These advancements enable the creation of comprehensive longitudinal patient records, improving accessibility and quality of care. By adopting scalable and adaptable system architectures, healthcare services can more effectively utilize shared data to drive better patient outcomes.

Diana Sonbay-Benli, VP & Chief Product Officer, Cognizant TriZetto Healthcare Products at Cognizant
Six key technological innovations driving interoperability include United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI), Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), the Da Vinci Project, the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), the Gravity Project, and Trebuchet.

1. USCDI provides a standardized set of essential health data elements to facilitate nationwide, interoperable health information exchange; USCDI helps us all use the same code sets so that procedure codes, drug codes, and more line up when data is shared across systems
2. FHIR is a standard for exchanging healthcare information electronically using modern web-based API technology to ensure flexible and scalable integration across different systems; FHIR lets us move around clinical data and other data that goes beyond the traditional insurance fee-for-service paradigm when data is shared among providers and payers
3. The Da Vinci Project is an HL7 initiative that develops use cases and implementation guides leveraging FHIR to improve data sharing and interoperability for value-based care; The Da Vinci Project gives the standard for how to use FHIR for specific use cases such as for prior authorizations, gaps in care, quality measures, and alerts
4. TEFCA establishes a national network of networks for health information exchange as a fabric to move this data
5. The Gravity Project gives another example of innovation related to the capture and sharing of social determinants of health (SDOH) data
6. Trebuchet helps fill in some of the additional gaps to make all of this work at scale

It’s imperative that healthcare organizations not only track but start engaging in these advances to participate in the multi-year transformation of the industry’s advancing fabric of interoperability.

Bobby Samuel, Chief Technology Officer at Apixio
Interoperability is foundational in transforming the US healthcare system to be more patient-centric. It is the means to lower healthcare costs and catch issues further upstream to improve health outcomes. Standards like FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) are streamlining the sharing of healthcare data across disparate information systems. Yet, even with data-sharing standards, the 137 terabytes of data generated by healthcare organizations daily are often fragmented, unorganized, and therefore, underutilized. That’s where AI and machine learning come in to surface actionable insights for healthcare workers and patients – from unstructured and structured sources.

Interoperability standards and technologies are not the solution in and of itself – these tools are enablers to reduce administrative burden and friction between systems, to help clinical workers focus on care delivery. Often, clinicians have a minute or less to review a patient’s complex medical chart before a visit and may be distracted trying to digest contradictory information during the encounter. Technology allows clinicians to quickly understand the data in a patient’s electronic health record, so they can redirect their time and attention to the patient. For example, a primary care physician could reallocate time that was previously spent combing through the medical history toward walking with their patient from the waiting room to the exam room. The additional quality time offers countless context clues about the patient that they may never mention, but that the clinician can observe to aid in preventative care (for example, the patient may have a limp that could lead to bigger problems).

Ultimately, the healthcare journey should revolve around the patient. Advancements in interoperability enable this vision by starting to break down the frustrating healthcare siloes patients navigate and empowering providers to deliver the best outcomes for their patients.

Timi Leslie, Founder and President at BluePath Health and Connecting for Better Health
Much of interoperability’s success will depend on achieving the final mile: Ensuring that information made available through data exchange is high-quality and actionable by balancing standardization with current capabilities. One innovation that is emerging among leaders driving health care and social service data sharing is community-focused sandboxes, which are virtual testing environments that allow entities to safely and seamlessly plan, design, and adjust data-sharing workflows. These initiatives foster community-led innovation and allow for rapid collaboration by bringing together community partners to agree upon exchange methods, enhancing end-to-end data usability for all exchange partners.

So many great insights here! Huge thank you to Marlena Herrera, Director, Customer Success at Protegrity, Don Rucker, Chief Strategy Officer at 1upHealth, Srikumar Ramanathan, Chief Solutions Officer at Mphasis, Hans Buitendijk, Public Health Workgroup Chair & Executive Committee Member at EHR Association, Laxmi Patel, Chief Strategy Officer at Savista, Sandra Johnson, Senior Vice President, Client Services at CliniComp, Diana Sonbay-Benli, VP & Chief Product Officer, Cognizant TriZetto Healthcare Products at Cognizant, Bobby Samuel, Chief Technology Officer at Apixio, and Timi Leslie, Founder and President at BluePath Health and Connecting for Better Health for taking the time out of your day to submit a quote! And thank you to all of you for taking the time out of your day to read this article! We could not do this without all of your support.

What innovative technologies and standards do you think are being employed to enhance interoperability and data sharing, and how are these advancements influencing the accessibility and quality of healthcare services? Let us know either in the comments down below or over on social media. We’d love to hear from all of you!

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