Healthcare organizations are beginning to realize that enabling consumer engagement and population health strategies are not possible unless the capability of effectively and efficiently communicating across care venues and systems exist as well. This is a big ask considering the increasingly complex care continuum that matches patient to care provider. This calls upon Connected Health and Interoperability solutions to work together in new, mission critical, ways.
- For health systems this is made more complex due to the mergers and acquisitions activities of the past few years that have left a complex system of systems in its wake.
- For the health plan this is made more complex by the complicated montage of systems that are required to navigate data through an even more complex process payment of care post healthcare reform.
When making decisions related to collaborative technology investments, the CIO has traditionally viewed integration with the EHR as the most important decision making criterion. However, it is now becoming more clear that while the EHR serves as a critical source for healthcare information, more often than not the EHR is just one of tens or hundreds of systems across an organization that need to be integrated to gain business value from Connected Health investments.
Greater Data Access vs. Data Security
Patients continue to want greater data access to their care data. Connected Health and Interoperability must work together to balance this want against the need for increased assurances of the confidentiality of health information. Due to new and existing trends both inside and outside of the industry, data security will become increasingly important to the healthcare consumer. Experian predicts that healthcare breaches will increase due to:
- Potential economic gain
- Increased digitization of records.
- Introduction of wearable technologies to care protocols
HIPAA data breaches are at an all-time high with a recorded 138% jump in the number of health records breached in 2013 as compared to 2012
38% of providers said electronically exchanging data decreases their ability to separate sensitive health information from other data being exchanged.
