The significant strides being made in health data interoperability and exchange, along with the space’s predictably bright future, are helping to shape modern healthcare as well as bolster it to stand firm against market uncertainty in the coming years. The role of the Chief Information Officer in healthcare organizations is perhaps arriving at its zenith, as the need to promote enhanced data sharing and interoperability throughout the tech stack serves as an important starting point for optimizing health systems and patient care standards. With only 74% of hospitals incorporating health data exchange in their electronic health record (EHR) systems, CIOs must seize this opportunity to bring a larger amount of systems into compliance.
Equally important is the need to protect the resulting massive, interweaving network of applications, platforms, vendors, and devices. Opening accessibility and decision capabilities are prerequisites for progress, which poses a number of challenges for cybersecurity. Full-data frameworks designed to harness the sheer power of health metrics must be provisioned with careful consideration for access hierarchies, security policies, connectivity protocols, and overall risk management.
This is where savvy investment in top-notch IT teams comes into play. Each healthcare organization's EHR, ERP, lab system tech, and radiology solutions should act as a single unit, seeing as a common problem in the industry as of late has been the proliferation of too many applications. Programming mismatches with an organization’s mainline tech stack forces a disintegration that is guaranteed to grind workflows to a halt, and further, can prevent the potential insight derived from advanced analysis.
