You can’t hide. You can’t even run. You have two choices. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that all is well, or you can truly evaluate your current IT Interoperability Architecture.

IT staff are being forced by circumstances to become workflow experts in areas we never dreamed of a few years back. Government regulations are forcing more and more accountability and reporting that requires foreign systems to become “related”. Constant technology changes and improvements are directing the necessary upgrades and development of old and new standards. The ever increasing use of technologyin departments and at the bedside is bringing more and more challenges to IT departments for real time patient care information updates and access, along with new communication standards. Successful healthcare entities realize that information - sliced, diced, assimilated and diced again-  is the key to surviving and excelling in the competitive market. This places economic pressures on the IT department to acquire the necessary technology to meet the demand. What about the ever-changing socioeconomic landscape, not only for our customers but also for the people who serve healthcare organizations?  So many different languages and interpretations of the languages. WOW! The challenges just keep mounting up.

So, how will success in this maze be measured? Success will be measured by how we deal with the information bombardment.

• There’s no argument that for better care you must connect; don’t disregard this, agility to maneuver through the technology and standard changes as they occur and the flexibility to change priorities and knowing that some crucial work will be temporary.
• There must be a balance were consistency and efficiency are the partners of flexibility.

It’s time to make sure that we not only are able to talk the talk, but we must now walk the talk. Our thought process must truly move on from interfacing to integration.  Traditionally, interfacing has always been defined as connecting the systems within the four walls of the hospital. Not so long ago an interface was defined as moving data from System A to System B. No matter how many times System A needed to communicate to other systems, a separate point to point interface was required. Then we got a little smarter; enter middleware.  Now systems could broadcast messages across the hospital and those systems that required the information could subscribe to and receive it. Data and communication standards were just beginning to emerge and there were as many “standards” as there were systems. HL7 was seen more as a way to reduce individual vendor implementation dollars than a way to begin to effectively allow communication across the hospital campus. Well, HL7 eventually did emerge as the de-facto standard and systems began to transmit data with greater ease and more data was turned into information.

The demand today is to integrate. This is where the talk must be well walked.  Your systems must be “harmonized”, made consistent and efficient. Anything short of this will result in undo effort and the waste of resources.  Some points to take to heart:

• We will be supporting multiple standards well beyond HL7 and most are not stable in that they will continue to evolve (temporary interfaces).
• Data from devices will need to be included; Physicians and PHOs will need access and connectivity. We’ll be dealing with many other critical aspects of the patient record.
• In addition to message,s we will have to transform terminology and documents.
• Data management should be centralized to avoid conflicts and costly decisions due to multiple agendas; aggregation of data to provide a holistic patient view will be critical to providing the right information at the right time.

It will be crucial to have the right professionals alongside you working to achieve these imperatives. Great integration consultants are hard to find today and will become more difficult to find overtime. As we dig deeper into Meaningful Use, they will be totally consumed. With the right resources backed by the right company, your IT “harmonizing” will result in a “symphony” of benefits. Santa Rosa is that company and we have the conductors and musicians to make it happen.