A New Way of Thinking About Interoperability in 2023

The US healthcare sector has long struggled with interoperability. While there are a number of industry initiatives that will develop the sector and make little steps towards interoperability, there are still a number of holes that need to be filled. The term "interoperability" refers to a far broader concept than just protocols, APIs, and restricted networks. It involves more than just data exchange between a provider, payer, or vendor on a one-to-one basis. Trust, transparency, and data flow are the three essential components of true interoperability. All authorised stakeholders must be able to quickly, safely, and in real time access data from the point of origin without having to pass through numerous data lakes, intermediaries based on aggregation, or data transformations. Our current emphasis is on data interchange, which is what most people imagine.