A health tech coalition released a report May 11 on how the healthcare system can improve IT interoperability and data exchange.
"If we want to have a better system, we need to act now. The longer we wait, the more catching up we will have to do in the future," Brett Meeks, senior policy adviser for the Health Innovation Alliance, said in a press release.
The U.S. Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has set a goal of improving health IT interoperability by 2030.
The Health Innovation Alliance says the following interoperability recommendations can improve care coordination, disease prevention and health outcomes:
- Enable data to work for patients and providers at the point of care.
- Leverage state-of-the-art medical devices to improve patient care.
- Establish clear protections from HIPAA penalties for patient information requests.
- Inform medical research and innovation with better information.
- Standardize, collect and use social determinants of health data.
- Improve public health data collection and reporting.