How to Achieve True Interoperability in Healthcare Systems

Summary

The video script addresses the challenge of achieving interoperability in healthcare systems, distinguishing between syntactic and semantic interoperability. Syntactic focuses on the structure of data exchange, exemplified by HL7 V2 and FHIR standards, which enable systems to communicate despite different formats. Semantic interoperability, however, ensures that data has a consistent meaning across systems, avoiding discrepancies in interpretation. The script emphasizes the importance of human agreement and FHIR's machine-readable profiles in advancing towards true semantic interoperability in healthcare IT.

Takeaways

• 🔄 Achieving interoperability between healthcare systems is an ongoing challenge due to numerous digital systems across facilities.
• 🖥️ Software solutions, including InterSystems technologies, help improve interoperability between these systems.
• 🔗 There are two types of interoperability: syntactic and semantic.
• 🔧 Syntactic interoperability focuses on the structure of messages but does not interpret their meaning, allowing systems to send and receive data in different formats.
• 📤 An intermediary system can transform data between formats, such as converting HL7 V2 messages to FHIR format, to achieve syntactic interoperability.
• 🌍 HL7 V2 is the most widely used interoperability standard, with InterSystems exchanging over one billion messages daily.
• 📜 Compatibility with FHIR is federally mandated in many countries, representing the future of healthcare IT interoperability.
• 🧠 Semantic interoperability ensures that data has the same meaning across systems, reducing discrepancies caused by human interpretation.
• 🦓 Human decision-making plays a key role in interpreting nuanced data, but semantic interoperability seeks to eliminate the need for this.
• 🏥 FHIR's machine-readable profiles enable healthcare systems to share data concepts and move toward semantic interoperability if common agreements are reached.

Q & A

What is the main challenge of achieving interoperability in healthcare systems?

The main challenge is enabling communication between dozens of digital systems at a given facility and across multiple facilities within a network. These systems often use different formats and structures, making data exchange difficult.

What are the two types of interoperability mentioned in the script?

The two types of interoperability are syntactic interoperability and semantic interoperability.

What is syntactic interoperability?

Syntactic interoperability ensures that systems can send and receive data in different formats by defining the structure of a message, but it does not address the meaning of the data being exchanged.

Why is syntactic interoperability crucial for healthcare IT infrastructure?

Syntactic interoperability allows systems to exchange data using standardized formats like HL7 V2 and FHIR, which are essential for communication between different healthcare systems.

What solution is typically used to achieve syntactic interoperability between systems using different data formats?

An intermediary system that transforms data from one format to another, such as converting HL7 V2 messages into FHIR format, is commonly used to achieve syntactic interoperability.

What is semantic interoperability?

Semantic interoperability ensures that data exchanged between systems has the same meaning and can be used directly within the receiving system's workflow without needing human interpretation.

Can you provide an example that illustrates the importance of semantic interoperability?

An example involves three different electronic health record systems documenting suspected lung cancer. Each system structures the data differently, making it difficult to determine that they all refer to the same medical condition, highlighting the need for common data definitions.

Why is it difficult to achieve semantic interoperability in healthcare?

Achieving semantic interoperability is challenging because systems may define the same concept in different ways, and there must be human agreement on standard definitions to ensure consistent meaning across systems.

What is the role of FHIR in promoting interoperability?

FHIR plays a key role by making everything machine-readable, including FHIR profiles, which allows for easier sharing of data concepts across organizations, moving them closer to semantic interoperability.

What must medical networks do to achieve semantic interoperability using FHIR?

Medical networks must agree on common FHIR profiles to use in their systems, which will help standardize data definitions and bring them closer to achieving semantic interoperability.