EHR Interoperability: Its Challenges and Benefits

Daniel Pluard

October 8, 2021
intely Blog Illustrations EHR Interoperability Its Challenges and Benefits

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are a core component of healthcare. However, despite their functional efficiency, they are marred with many challenges. Antiquated and standardized systems of record are slowing down the growth of the healthcare sector. 

The interoperability difficulties being faced by the healthcare sector are being addressed by adopting an API-led healthcare strategy. API-driven healthcare solutions are gaining popularity among hospitals, physicians, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and patients. 

Providers are finding that adopting healthcare data standards can help them overcome interoperability challenges. In this blog, we’ll discuss EHR interoperability and its challenges and benefits to the healthcare industry. 

What is EHR Interoperability? 

EHR interoperability is the ability to transfer medical records and other healthcare information from one system to another. When EHRs are interoperable, they can work hand-in-hand with other cloud-based programs. This will enable different providers to seamlessly share patient data. 

What are the benefits of EHR Interoperability in the healthcare industry? 

Every healthcare provider who uses EHRs knows how beneficial they are, especially if they are interoperable. Here are some of its benefits. 

  • Improvement of Patient Outcomes 

Interoperability gives physicians and other healthcare staff access to patient data whenever they need it, wherever they are. As a result, doctors can treat their patients better at any point of care. 

  • Seamless Doctor-Patient Communication 

Like any other relationship, communication makes everything better. With improved healthcare communication, we can expect increased provider and patient satisfaction.  

  • Operational Efficiency 

Interoperable EHRs help in making healthcare operations more efficient. With EHR interoperability, patients’ data is available to all the caregivers who need specific patient-related information. 

  • Reduced Administrative Duties 

Interoperable EHRs reduce repetitive tests, image orders, and lab draws. Also, patients gain better control over their health data and can more easily retrieve it when needed. Administrative duties for collecting patient data from multiple sources are lessened. 

What EHR interoperability challenges does intely solve? 

Listed below are the biggest challenges that healthcare providers face concerning EHR interoperability. 

  • High cost of integration 

Implementing effective healthcare data integration is quite expensive. Small healthcare organizations may have a hard time integrating EHRs with other systems. 

Intely offers EHR integration at a price that you can afford. You can choose which plan suits your organization best. 

  • Poor Standardization 

Providers conform to a standard set of HL7 FHIR API resources. However, workflows and connections are still non-standard. Also, there is no standardized guide on EHR integration. So, vendors need to set up integration channels to connect to different endpoints for each resource and system of record. 

intely provides standard connectivity to major EMR and EHR systems using HL7 FHIR APIs and EMR specific APIs. The user can choose a templated use case or create a custom workflow from a front-end interface using drag-and-drop configuration. 

  • Poor repeatability and scalability 

Implementing an automated interoperability solution is quite complicated. Most integration vendors do not provide a plug-and-play model with a template configuration to solve use cases, resulting in poor repeatability and scalability. 

Intely offers reliable no-code/low-code solutions with templated configuration to solve use cases. To facilitate seamless and repeatable integration, we created standard connections and templated workflows. 

Intely’s EHR Interoperability Solutions 

Integration vendors like intely can provide you with standardized EHR interoperability solutions. 

Intely removes the time-consuming and complicated process of implementing integration solutions. We make integration easy – Drag, drop, done. 

Here at intely, we promote EHR interoperability. Our solutions allow EHR systems to be tightly integrated with other system applications. 

Interested in how Intely can integrate your EHRs to your other software applications? Visit intely.io to learn more. 

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