By Edmund Billings, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Medsphere Systems Corporation, the solution provider for the OpenVista electronic health record.
Yes healthcare interoperability is a mess right now. Few players in the complex healthcare ecosystem are able to play well together. Yet, it is possible. We already enjoy the technical solution to HIT interoperability in our everyday lives.
The answer is in the cloud.
Our personal and professional interactions have been transformed by the Internet and eCommerce. It’s cloud-based interoperability that connects us to friends, family and professional networks as well as virtual project collaboration and global marketplaces.
These marketplaces are powered through cloud connections between customers, suppliers and partners for marketing, billing and delivery. The seamless collaborations benefit everyone. In fact, Etsy — a fast-growing marketplace for crafters — is planning an IPO this spring that’s expected to raise between $100 million and $300 million dollars.
In healthcare, the lack of rudimentary interoperability continues to draw attention. We ruminate on how an obscure artist in Nepal can easily sell through Etsy to collectors in New York, and yet our patient health records are not shared across our healthcare practitioners.
While collaboration works in most industries to the benefits of all, the vendor ‘closed records’ model is followed by larger EHR vendors and their clients in HIT, because it works for them. Business models in healthcare have encouraged retention of patient data, and with it a highly sticky relationship with the patient. It’s a hassle to change doctors. Unfortunately, patient care is frequently compromised.
However, there are trends and examples that lead to optimism: 21st Century interoperation is happening in HIT. New healthcare reform initiatives have put pressure on hospitals to disrupt this vendor lock.
In an effort to make up for falling inpatient revenues and margins, hospital-based systems are integrating their ambulatory and practice-based services by buying practices and aligning more tightly with affiliated physicians.
To support the continuum of care, these organisations are going to have to integrate their care services beyond simple data sharing to interoperation supporting coordinated and collaborative care. With or without the collaboration of proprietary, sole-source EHR vendors, healthcare is joining the 21st century in the cloud.
Medsphere, the provider of the OpenVistA EHR has joined with BT, the established international IT services provider to promote a SaaS open-platform solution with cloud-based interoperability. As we see it:
“As the financial benefits of Meaningful Use wane and hospitals move toward maximising the use of health IT solutions, it has become clear that interoperability, not just interfacing, is a predominant issue moving forward; so is providing EHRs and other solutions for hospitals with limited resources. In SaaS OpenVista, Medsphere and BT see a solution that satisfies both concerns.”
A recent HealthDive article points out that the analysts are bullish predicting significant growth.
“The healthcare cloud market in the US and Europe is expected to grow between 10 and 30 per cent by 2020, and in the United States to reach $3.5 billion by 2020: up from $903 million in 2013.”
Of course, creating more opportunities for interoperability and sharing data creates more opportunities for security concerns. Great care must be taken to build security into solutions from the start, not to treat security as a ‘bolt on’ afterwards.
BT and Medsphere understand this, and their approach to the SaaS model for OpenVista is underpinned by BT’s security practice, BT Assure. Ongoing vigilance and proactive security monitoring and prevention must be core features of any interoperable Health IT system.
Wouldn’t it be great to bring the efficiencies we all experience through collaborative cloud sharing along with best practices for IT security to healthcare? The end result will be better outcomes for all.
Find out more about BT’s cloud solutions.
A seasoned healthcare information technology (IT) entrepreneur, Dr. Edmund Billings helped pioneer the development of electronic medical records (EMR).
Contact
Paul Berlin
Medsphere Systems Corporation
1903 Wright Place #120
Carlsbad, CA 92008
PH: 760.692.3714
www.medsphere.com
