How HIEs and AI can work in tandem to boost interoperability ROI

“Interoperability is essentially front page news now, and I think that’s exciting,” said Don Woodlock, vice president of HealthShare Platforms at Intersystems. “We spent all those years adopting EHRs, and now we’re wanting to get the most out of them. Now we have the digital data, so it should be more liquid and in control of patients and put to use in the care process, even if I go to multiple sites for my care.”

As ONC and CMS prepare to digest the voluminous public comment on their proposed interoperability rules, especially the emphasis on exchange specs such as FHIR and open APIs, he sees the future only getting brighter for these types of advances as data flows more freely.

“We’re in the interoperability business, and we like having data being more available and more liquid, and systems being more open to getting data out of them,” said Woodlock.

“A lot of customers are starting to embark on their journey with with FHIR, and they’re really bullish on this as well: having a an API standards-based API way to interact with medical record medical record data,” he added. “We’re sort of at the beginning of that as being another giant breakthrough, I think, in terms of liquidity of healthcare information.”