Healthcare loves to talk about the challenge that is data and interoperability in healthcare. Indeed, healthcare faces a major challenge when it comes to data and interoperability. However, it’s actually even more complex than this. I realized this when talking with ELLKAY as they prepare for the upcoming ViVE and HIMSS conferences. As I saw their solution suite, I realized that healthcare doesn’t just have one data or one interoperability problem. It has a multitude of data and interoperability problems.
Let me give you a feel for some of the data and interoperability challenges a healthcare organization faces that vendors like ELLKAY are helping to solve:
- Hospitals – Every hospital I know has a major need for data conversion and archiving projects. Whether they are replacing older systems with something new or they’ve acquired another hospital and are moving them to the same system, this is a major data project in every hospital.
- Government Regulations and Payers – We all know that the government and payers never sleep when it comes to new regulations and requirements. The latest CMS interoperability and patient access rules require sharing and value based care initiatives are forcing healthcare organizations to share as well. It’s key to streamline data collection to support risk, quality, and care management workflows.
- Population Health – While EHR vendors would love to think they’re the single source of clinical information, the reality is much different. In order to do population health effectively, you need to have end-to-end system connectivity and clinical data across disparate sources. Plus, ideally you make one single API for that data available to partners.
- Ambulatory – The needs of medical practices are similar to hospitals in that they often have to decommission legacy applications. Plus, they need to migrate and/or archive data from previous systems. As many of these practices are acquired by health systems, this need becomes even more acute.
- Lab – We’re finally to the point where most lab orders are being sent electronically. However, how is that exchange of data going? How does your lab notify physicians of any missing information so the physician can correct the error before they arrive at the lab for accessioning? This requires well done end-to-end connectivity between the EHR and the LIS.
I could keep going, but I think you get the idea. Healthcare organizations need a solution to a wide variety of data and interoperability challenges. While there are hundreds of vendors out there working on 1 or 2 of the problems above, one thing that makes ELLKAY pretty unique is that they have solutions for all of these data and interoperability problems above.
The reality is that every healthcare CIO faces the above challenges and there’s likely more to come. We’ll see how this space plays out over time, but it’s hard to imagine that it won’t play out similar to the EHR space where one vendor that can solve a wide variety of these challenges is going to preferred to a bunch of point solutions.
If you want to learn more about ELLKAY’s efforts to address the full breadth of data and interoperability challenges in healthcare, you can schedule a meeting with them at ViVE (Booth #742) or HIMSS (Booth #5645). Plus, they’ll be doing a number of Coffee Hours and Happy Hours where you can learn more while enjoying a nice beverage.
What should be clear to any health IT leader is the need for a comprehensive data strategy. Having the right partner that can help you execute that strategy is going to be key. Whether you’re lowering costs by decommissioning and archiving legacy applications, you’re converting data to a new system for continuity of care, or you’re leveraging your data for population health and value based care, much of your future success is going to ride on the back of how well you manage data and interoperability.
