Summary
The creation of interoperable healthcare system and the ability to achieve a meaningful use of data mining requires a new breed of application that works at a higher layer as a traffic cop to process messages from different systems. It also requires an innovative business model based on transaction.
Analysis
As stated in the article, healthcare automation is necessary to improve delivery and squeeze cost. Specific purpose applications, data and network security, and standards are the infrastructure required to accomplish automation.
However, interoperability required to provide meaningful use of automation has a much deeper meaning. It is the ability to utilize data across multiple systems to accomplish specific tasks. In other words, process flows at a higher level that can retrieve relevant data from one system, feed it to another system for processing, update the data and save it properly at the end of the process.
In the absence of such system, Electronic Health Records, and other infrastructures, will continue to exist in silos, and will undercut the potential benefits of automation. For such system to exist there is need to understand the relationships between multiple actions related to the same event, understand the data requirements of different health providers, and the privacy issues related to the patient as well as the provider.
The application that will automate all other applications is possible; many of us understand how to build such system.
I believe that the business world will need to adapt to a different model for this type of systems. This business model will be transaction based and will provide monetary incentives to the health providers and the participating information technology companies. Such business model exists in other industries, and it can create the health care automation industry.
