As the call for interoperability grows louder, healthcare organizations could learn a lot from information systems that exist in most decent-sized municipalities: library computer systems.
Libraries have always shared information, whether by card catalogs or computer systems, in a way that is understandable to users. The Library of Congress developed standardized rules of description so the catalogs in various library systems nationwide would be formatted the same. Healthcare systems lag far behind this basic principal, according to an iHealthBeat blog post by Charis Baz Takaro, a project and policy analyst at University Health Services at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Library of Congress developed an encoding standard called MARC in the 1960s that was neutral to vendor, operating system and hardware — it is simply the platform that allows librarians to share information uploaded into a MARC framework. The network was tested in a few Ohio libraries but soon spread to many libraries nationwide, according to the post.
Libraries do not have to deal with the political and financial complications of healthcare or worry about cybersecurity breaches, but it is a working model to show how interoperability can be achieved and show financial benefits, according to the post.
"We need a governing body as influential as the Library of Congress to initiate development and promote standards in the best interests of national health," Ms. Takaro wrote. "Like library data exchange, health information exchange would benefit from using one well-defined exchange format, having rules that allow meaning to move with the data and by building in direct financial rewards."