Health information interoperability has potential benefits for all stakeholders in the United States health care ecosystem. Despite significant health information infrastructure investments in recent years, however, the flow of information needed to achieve true learning health systems is still early in its development. Notably, there is a critical need to integrate existing technical standards with evolving health care processes in ways that will promote a culture of interoperability.
This brief addresses three specific opportunities to enable greater process interoperability: 1) better integrating EHRs and other new forms of health IT into clinical workflows, 2) creating the right market incentives for health information interoperability, and 3) ensuring the security and privacy of health information as it flows through and between health IT systems.