I worked in the silicon valley’s telecomm industry for a decade. Then I experienced more than a decade of work in Healthcare around the US.

Telecomm has a focus on data flow connectivity and the telecomm industry has a history of creating connectivity standards at the global level via IEEE, IEC etc. Similarly Healthcare also has standards, but a lot of the standards are focused on the data itself (SNOMED, LOIN, etc code sets) and very little on the data flow connectivity (HL7 interfaces, HIE interfaces etc). Furthermore, the complexity of the content within the Healthcare data as opposed to the general telecomm data makes INTEROPERABILITY a big challenge in Healthcare during the modernization phase.

The “Meaningful Use” program created by CMS to incentivize EHR adoption created many walled garden health data stores across the country. Furthermore, more passive collection of data from FDA approved wellness devices will create more health data that won’t be aggregated with EHR data to create anything holistic for a person. In addition, it will impede progress in clinical decision making AI tools in the long run.

I applaud any effort to breakdown this walls either through deregulation, filing suit against companies to make healthcare data inaccessible etc. If there’s going to be any “Meaningful Use” of healthcare data, it needs to flow freely with proper guardrails to accomplish healthcare goals for the population. The current leadership in the healthcare space can do much better than they have done in past two decades.

As a healthcare architect, I have advocated for this and help folks understand that this INTEROPERABILITY vision needs collaboration, time, effort and money. It’s not an easy path but a worthwhile path to get to the next level of seismic changes in Healthcare.