Late-Breaking AMIA 2012 Session on Interoperability

Follow the AMIA 2012 Twitter feed in their chat room – no account necessary. Or use hashtag #AMIA2012.

SMART Lead Architect Josh Mandel and Evaluator Ross Koppel will speak in the following late-breaking session.

LB05: Interoperability: Why is it Taking so Darn Long?
Tuesday, November 6 3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Room: Continental A

Gil Kuperman, New York Presbyterian Hospital; Harry Solomon, GE Healthcare; Ross Koppel, University of Pennsylvania; Charles Jaffe, HL7, Joshua Mandel, Children’s Hospital Boston, Douglas B. Fridsma, Office of the National Coordinator for HIT

Questions abound around why it’s taking so long to achieve practical interoperability in the US health system? Patients and their advocates wonder why can’t the records of care at one institution easily be merged with the records of care somewhere else? Or why can’t health information interoperate on the Internet the way that so many other types of industries do? Those in the industry debate the level of difficulty around technical problems and standards.

AMIA 2012 SPC Chair Bill Hersh, MD, asked recently “is it something inherent in the nature of clinical data, such as concern for privacy or the economic aspects of healthcare that lead to organizations not wanting to share data?”

This panel will examine the potential for interoperability to improve care, the role of standards organizations in advancing interoperability and what is needed beyond standards per se to support interoperability-based use cases. Whoever or whatever is at fault, the problem is that in the eyes of many, including AMIA members, interoperability is not happening fast enough. In other words “why is it taking so darn long?”