Healthcare Interoperability Mess Created by Vendors’ Proprietary IT

Vendors are developing and selling proprietary IT products and services that do not interoperate, creating a significant healthcare interoperability problem, testified LifePoint Health Chief Medical Informatics Officer Christopher Rehm before a March 26 hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. To address the interoperability problem, vendors have developed integration and interface engines and other products that “glue together” proprietary technology. “But it is up to the providers to bear the burden and cost of implementing and integrating all of these separate pieces, and it doesn’t stop once we have bought them,” Rehm said in prepared testimony.