Seamless Care, Connected Data: Overcoming Challenges in the Interoperability of Electronic Health Records
The vision for modern healthcare is a system where a patient’s complete medical history is instantly and securely available to any provider at the point of care. This future hinges on Electronic Health Record (EHR) interoperability—the ability of different IT systems and applications to communicate, exchange, and meaningfully use data.
While the benefits are transformative—from reduced medical errors to lower costs—the path to seamless data exchange is paved with significant technical, organizational, and regulatory hurdles. Overcoming these challenges is the new frontier for health IT.
The Three Core Challenges to Interoperability
The obstacles to true interoperability can be grouped into three distinct, yet interconnected, areas:
1. Technical and Semantic Incompatibility
The most obvious barrier is that EHR systems don’t speak the same language.
- Inconsistent Data Formats: Hundreds of different EHR products exist, each with unique database structures, data fields, and documentation styles. Data exchange is often stuck at the
