Harmonizing Interoperability in Healthcare for a Symphony of Care

Imagine stepping into Carnegie Hall to see the New York Philharmonic sitting on stage, but each member of the orchestra is wearing a blindfold and earplugs. The conductor stumbles onto the podium, also with eyes and ears covered, and begins waving their arms. Without the visual and audio connection between the conductor and the musicians, the NY Philharmonic is unable to perform the beautiful harmonious music that it’s known to produce.

Much like a symphonic orchestra, harmony is required for healthcare clinicians to better deliver timely, accurate, and compassionate patient care. Healthcare operations rely on every provider to be connected, and that’s made easier when there’s an established connection between siloed systems, including EHRs, nursing call systems, patient monitoring systems, scheduling systems, and other technology platforms. 

In other words, true interoperability is essential for healthcare organizations. In this article, we’ll discuss why seamless interoperability matters, the risks of poor interoperability, and how Hypercare is a harmonious solution to improving interoperable systems within clinical settings. 

‍

What is Interoperability and Why Does it Matter in Healthcare?

Healthcare interoperability refers to the ability of disparate health information technology systems – including EHRs, medical devices, diagnostic equipment, and clinical applications – to seamlessly connect with one another for data exchange. This connection enables systems to not only access and exchange patient data but also integrate and interpret it in a unified and coordinated manner across organizational and technological boundaries.

True interoperability extends beyond the simple transmission of information between two endpoints. The real challenge lies in ensuring that data arriving at its destination is not only received but also accurately interpreted and actionable. 

When a patient's lab results travel from one system to another, for instance, the receiving system must understand not just the numerical values, but also the units of measurement, the reference ranges, and the clinical context. For example, one system may use “BP” while another says “blood pressure” – both need to be understood to mean the same thing. 

Ensuring that diverse health information systems can effectively communicate with one another despite differences in vendors, data structures, or organizational workflows.

Four levels of interoperability

There are four levels of interoperability that must all be met to achieve true interoperability: 

• Foundational interoperability: This level outlines the ability to exchange information between systems. 
• Structural interoperability: At this level, data formats and structure are standardized.
• ‍Semantic interoperability: This level is where data interpretation happens. ‍
• Organizational interoperability: This refers to the governance and policies that enable interoperability at the organizational level. 

‍

The clinical benefits of interoperability

Within the healthcare ecosystem, robust interoperability guarantees that clinical data is standardized and arrives at its destination in consistent, recognizable formats. This standardization is what transforms raw data into useful intelligence. 

For clinical workflows, interoperability ensures that critical patient information reaches the right clinician, at the right time. Whether it's a patient's medication history available during an emergency department visit or allergy information accessible to a new specialist, timely exchange and access of comprehensive data directly supports better clinical decision-making and ultimately improves patient outcomes.

‍

The Real-World Risks of Poor Interoperability

Without comprehensive, interoperable systems in place, organizations face several risks to patient safety, workflow efficiency, and healthcare compliance.

1. Compromised patient safety

Patient safety is most at risk when systems fail to communicate effectively. If information cannot easily be exchanged, accessed, or interpreted between systems, clinicians may lack information needed to make critical decisions, which can lead to medical errors. In fact, 80% of medical errors stem from miscommunication during patient handoffs.  

Additionally, in emergency situations where seconds matter, the inability to quickly access vital patient information from interoperable systems can mean the difference between life and death.

‍

2. Workflow inefficiencies

Workflow inefficiencies multiply across healthcare organizations when interoperability falters. Clinical staff waste valuable time manually searching for information across multiple disconnected platforms, calling various departments to track down results, or re-entering data that should flow automatically between integrated systems. 

Toggling between numerous platforms, searching for patient information, and interpreting data can all take time away from patient care. Not only that, but workflow bottlenecks – such as translating inconsistent formatting on lab results or aligning with other organizations on data sharing processes – can ripple through the entire care continuum, extending wait times, delaying diagnoses, and even reducing the number of patients an organization can provide care for. 

‍

3. Compliance and regulatory risks

Compliance and regulatory risks also escalate when healthcare systems lack interoperability. Regulations such as the 21st Century Cures Act and ONC's interoperability regulations mandate that healthcare organizations implement technologies capable of seamless data exchange and prevent information blocking. Organizations operating with fragmented, non-interoperable systems face potential penalties and legal exposure for failing to meet these requirements. 

Beyond federal mandates, poor interoperability complicates audit trails and documentation requirements. When data flows through unintegrated, poorly tracked pathways, it’s difficult to demonstrate compliance with HIPAA security standards. 

‍

How Hypercare Improves Interoperability in Clinical Settings

If all of your clinical tools are members of a symphony, then Hypercare is the conductor connecting siloed systems into harmony. 

Hypercare has built integrations with multiple technology platforms. This is done through Hypercare and third-party APIs, or other integration options such as flat file transfers. There are various nuances and factors, such as the third-party API quality, time-to-build, and stability of integration, to consider when choosing which avenue of integration to take. 

No matter which integration you choose, there are a couple of key ways that Hypercare can help bring interoperability into your clinical workflows. 

‍

1. Delivering critical, time-sensitive information

Alarms for critical notifications, such as code team activations or patient monitors, are designed to notify emergency providers, but they can be indiscriminate and provide little context. This leads to alarm fatigue as clinicians start to ignore them, and patients are constantly exposed to excess noise.

To address this issue, Hypercare has built integrations with platforms such as Connexall and other patient monitoring systems to improve the specificity of notification delivery. Through these integrations, clinicians are able to activate code teams that trigger specific clinicians based on coverage and on-call, and patient monitors send alerts directly to the nurse assigned to the patient. Through targeted delivery, Hypercare helps reduce noise pollution and alarm fatigue among clinicians. 

Hypercare also has integrations with both Zoll and Lifenet to deliver EKGs directly to relevant on-call physicians’ mobile devices in real-time. It also includes features to bypass do-not-disturb and silent modes to ensure that the notification is heard and seen. 

This is critical to detecting and triaging potential STEMI to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and shorten the time it takes to gather the cath lab team, improving first medical contact to balloon times and ultimately patient outcomes. 

‍

2. Enhancing data accessibility and visibility

Clinicians often rely on switchboard operators to access essential information about colleagues, such as on-call schedules or contact information. 

Why? Simply put: clinicians are busy. It’s cumbersome to sit down at a computer, access the hospital intranet, and then navigate to one of 15 links that could be the on-call schedule or directory when you have a list of 20 patients to see. 

To increase data access and visibility among clinical teams, Hypercare integrates with various scheduling systems to create a single source of truth through which on-call schedules can be accessed with ease and accuracy. This reduces reliance on switchboards and outdated intranet systems. 

Additionally, Hypercare integrates with the hospital's active directory and can sync to display comprehensive information such as office and clinic location, extension number, emergency contact, and more, directly in the user’s Hypercare profile. Each of these fields is customizable by the organization to fit all of its unique needs.

‍

Real-World Case Studies

To demonstrate the critical role interoperability plays in real clinical settings, below are a few ways hospitals have used Hypercare as a solution to their communication gaps. 

Mile Bluff Medical Center: Reduced activation times 

When clinical communication tools interoperate seamlessly with hospital systems, time to emergency and code team activation can be compressed from minutes down to mere seconds.

Mile Bluff Medical Center demonstrates this impact through its adoption of Hypercare's interoperable platform. The hospital’s previous infrastructure lacked connection between on-call scheduling, coordination, and secure messaging which not only delayed care and slowed emergency response, but also impacted patient outcomes and left providers feeling frustrated and burned out. Mile Bluff sought to find an interoperability solution that could match the urgency and complexity of its clinical workflows.

After partnering with Hypercare, Mile Bluff's activation time for urgent and emergency surgeries decreased from 20-30 minutes to just five seconds – an impact made possible through seamless data exchange between disparate systems.

‍

Health Sciences North: Pager and switchboard replacement 

Health Sciences North (HSN), a tertiary care academic hospital and referral center serving Northeastern Ontario, faced significant interoperability challenges that impacted clinical workflows. 

The organization's legacy paging infrastructure suffered from persistent connectivity problems, while its on-call scheduling operated in isolation from other systems. This lack of integration forced every department to manually send their schedules to the hospital switchboard on a weekly basis – a process that not only created redundant work but also introduced transcription errors as data moved between disconnected systems.

To solve these fundamental communication gaps, HSN partnered with Hypercare to establish an integrated clinical communication ecosystem, replacing hundreds of legacy pagers with an interoperable platform that could connect scheduling, messaging, and directory systems. 

Within just one month of deploying the unified platform, 70% of eligible users had adopted the system, over 45,000 secure messages flowed through connected workflows, and 46 previously fragmented on-call schedules were consolidated into a single, accessible system. 

‍

Sault Area Hospital: Integrated scheduling and consult workflows

The interoperability of on-call scheduling systems with secure messaging platforms creates another critical advantage. When these systems communicate bidirectionally and share data in real-time, healthcare teams experience faster response rates, eliminate wasted time hunting down the appropriate provider, and significantly reduce care delays that can impact patient outcomes.

Sault Area Hospital (SAH) leveraged this type of systems integration to transform physician coordination and communication. By implementing Hypercare's platform, SAH connected their scheduling infrastructure directly with their secure messaging system, enabling genuine interoperability between the two. 

This integration provides instant, real-time visibility into on-call status without requiring manual lookups or phone calls. The seamless data exchange allows physicians to see current availability at a glance and coordinate more efficiently. Additionally, Hypercare functions as a dynamically updated directory that pulls from connected systems, dramatically reducing SAH's dependence on switchboard operators to route communications.

‍

Looking Ahead: The Future of Hypercare Integrations

The direction of Hypercare has always been charted by the needs of our customers, and the integrations we build are no different. Each integration built to date ensures its function aligns closely with practical clinical needs.

Future directions include more in-depth integrations with EHRs, including Epic, Meditech, and Cerner. This will enable users to identify workflows that would benefit from accessing specific patient data from patient charts, which increases interoperability. 

There are also benefits in integrating with telephony systems such as Cisco, Mitel, and Avaya, to allow users to route calls directly within the Hypercare platform. 

‍

Key Takeaways and Next Steps

Interoperability is the most valuable when it enables workflows. While data exchange protocols are the first step in achieving true interoperability, the real success happens when clinicians can access the right information faster, coordinate care more effectively, and deliver better patient care. 

Hypercare functions as the orchestrating force that brings disconnected systems into operational harmony. Rather than forcing healthcare organizations to replace their existing infrastructure, Hypercare integrates with the clinical systems already in place – scheduling platforms, EHRs, alert systems, and communication tools – creating a unified solution where previously siloed information flows seamlessly and workflows function effectively. 

Explore Hypercare’s integrations or schedule a demo to learn more about how Hypercare can help harmonize interoperability at your organization.