The Lack of True Healthcare Interoperability is Leading to Suboptimal Results

According to a new National Academy of Medicine report, the “suboptimal” nature of healthcare technology purchasing is a major barrier to the interoperable exchange of electronic health information. “When it comes to procuring digital services for health and healthcare systems, interoperability is simply not yet an effectively structured component of either the supply or the demand equations, nor of the links between the two,” finds the NAM report. “In contrast to many other industries, the purchasers of healthcare technology have not fully leveraged their individual or collective purchasing power to require interoperability from the health technology marketplace.” NAM contends that most electronic health records, medical devices and other IT systems are not sufficiently interoperable to provide quality healthcare.

According to the report, “Hospitals and other healthcare providers purchase systems and equipment from a variety of different manufacturers, and frequently, each comes with its own proprietary interface technology. As a result, most healthcare providers spend time and money setting up each technology in a different way instead of being able to rely on a consistent means of connectivity. Healthcare providers also purchase technology that will work for their system, without considering the systems that interact with their own or the systems that their patients are connected with.” In addition to these challenges facing the healthcare industry, lack of interoperability is causing poor patient matching which is further interfering with healthcare delivery.

The good news, according to the report, is that with better procurement practices—supported by shared interoperability platforms and architecture—healthcare systems can accelerate progress in achieving high-quality, connected and patient-centered care.

This is where WhamTech SmartData Fabric® advanced index-based security-centric distributed virtual data, master data and graph data management, and analytics, comes in. SmartData Fabric® enables true 360 patient view interoperability across multiple disparate data sources and systems, regardless of where or how the data is stored. SmartData Fabric® can also monitor data changes in, and write back to, data sources and systems, process events using standard business process management tools, update BI, reporting, analytics and other processes and applications.

About WhamTech
WhamTech, Inc. is a software company whose mission is to develop security-centric distributed virtual data, master data and graph data management, and analytics technology software products. WhamTech develops these products to anticipate, meet and exceed the demands of customers seeking an alternative to the conventional approaches of data warehouses, federated data access with conventional adapters and enterprise search. WhamTech’s goal is to provide an improved and more seamless way to work with data, by leaving it where it resides, and change the way fundamental and advanced data management is addressed. For more information, visit WhamTech at www.whamtech.com or follow @WhamTech_Inc on Twitter.

By: Larry King, CPA, CGMA WhamTech CFO/COO

Contact
Larry King, 972-991-5700 ext. 703
larry.king@whamtech.com