Interoperability: Do we have the value proposition upside down?

Dr. Doug Fridsma, CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association, has been working on the nuts and bolts of interoperability for a very long time. Prior to joining AMIA, he served as chief scientist at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, leading management of the Federal Health Architecture and Standards & Interoperability Framework during the pivotal post-HITECH period.

Since then, Fridsma and his AMIA colleagues have been vocal proponents of a forward-thinking and creative approach to interoperability, with an eye toward the health system of the future – one fed as much by data from medical devices, apps and other consumer-facing technology as by the clinical elements of the electronic health records.

In a future driven by new types of patient-generated information and social determinants data, most of it coming from outside of traditional health systems, Fridsma says it's critical to think of interoperability not as a goal to be strived for, but as an ongoing process, driven by diverse stakeholders, that will continue to evolve and be reshaped by emerging developments.

Fridsma spoke recently with Healthcare IT News about some lessons learned from his tenure at ONC; what AMIA thinks about the proposed interoperability rules from 21st Century Cures; the importance of staying focused on achievable use cases for data exchange, why it might be useful to share first and standardize later, and what lessons can be learned from the APIs undergirding the World Wide Web.

The full Healthcare IT News article can be viewed at this link.