Transforming Healthcare Industry with Interoperability

Different patients have different needs. Some need help with yearly health check-ups; some need intensive care and assistance. Doctors and administrators are constantly trying to make medical assessment an easy, efficient, and positive experience for all the patients while taking care of these diverse needs.

But in figuring out the solutions, they are encountering new issues. On the one hand, doctors understand the significance of personalization of care and assistance according to the patient’s needs; on the other, the associated challenges burden doctors with work outside of their work profile.

So, what role does interoperability play in increasing the scope of healthcare?

To understand the contribution of interoperability in bursting the knowledge bubble, we need to begin from the beginning. When two or more hardware systems or software applications, whether they are high-end or the most basic equipment, perform a task together without interruption — that’s due to the interoperability. Interoperability across software applications, media platforms, and management systems can enable healthcare professionals to become more efficient at comparatively less effort. But so does every machine in a learning environment. Automation of systems are done to reduce time and effort. So, how is interoperability different?

Advantages of interoperability:

Interoperability enhances the process of healthcare management and improves the medical industry in various ways:

• Eases the pressure off doctors: For patients, medical assistance is a necessity to know how their body is functioning or how they can improve their health. However, the responsibilities of a doctor are not limited to prescribing medications. The schedules of the meetings between the head of the department and the doctors, or the minutes from the discussion regarding the allocation of responsibilities for handling certain cases or attending to certain financial requirements of patients needing medical attention – all these are not directly related to doctors but are helpful in the overall progress of the patients. The faster the administrative procedures take place; the more committed doctors can get with their time and energy.

• Helps in developing a virtual vision: Interoperability provided the much-needed support in virtually attending to patients during the long months of the pandemic. But there is still a massive disparity in the accessibility to systems and networks, which is also visible in the rise in complications related to providing accurate medical diagnosis. Interoperability can help keep individual records of patients to provide specific help to every patient who has follow ups with their doctors or needs guidance with a particular condition or symptom.

• Enables real-time updates: When the size of the database, which includes several tests and scans and patients’ medical history, is significantly large, most of the data remains unused. The lack of ease in searching, retrieving and sharing individual details hinders purposeful use. Individually updating the changes in each database management system is also time-consuming. Interoperability in software and systems helps maintain consistency in the data throughout, in real-time.

Each patient has different requirements but providing them the same undivided attention and assistance is the responsibility of the authorities and the doctors. In a quest to make medical care more accessible and more enriching for patients, interoperability also eliminates the burden on the doctors. When systems manage data on their own – different departments can work in sync, data is consistent throughout, doctors can focus on helping their patients instead of juggling various jobs, and patients are provided with quality medical assistance and healthcare.