Interoperability
The ability of different healthcare information systems to exchange, interpret, and use clinical data meaningfully.
Healthcare interoperability operates at four levels: foundational (systems can exchange data), structural (data format is preserved), semantic (meaning is understood), and organizational (governance and policy align). Most healthcare integration work targets structural and semantic interoperability — getting HL7v2 messages to parse correctly and mapping local codes to standard terminologies. True semantic interoperability remains aspirational for much of the industry.
FAQ
- Why is healthcare interoperability so hard?
- Every health system customizes their EHR differently, uses local code sets, and has unique workflow assumptions. Standards like HL7v2 allow too much optionality, so two "compliant" systems often cannot talk without custom mapping.