Why Data Interoperability in Healthcare Is a #1 Sector Priority

Key takeaways

Data interoperability ensures the secure, seamless exchange of data between healthcare systems and providers. This is necessary for improving patient care, mitigating data quality issues, and meeting ever-changing data regulation frameworks. In this article, we outline why data interoperability in healthcare is so important and provide tips for facilitating the practice.

Data interoperability in healthcare refers to the access, integration, and exchange of data between different systems, including imaging software, lab systems, and electronic health records (EHRs).

This practice is becoming increasingly necessary in healthcare settings, as organizations scale their digital operations, transform their patient experiences, and reinvent their models of care. So much so, that it’s now a top regulatory priority for 2025 and beyond.

Indeed, HIPAA’s recent updates explicitly call out the need for faster data exchange between providers and insurers. Across the Atlantic, the UK government’s 10-year plan for the NHS also emphasizes the importance of data synchronization and accessibility.

But why is data interoperability so important in healthcare? And how can organizations prepare for seamless data exchange?

Why are regulators pushing for enhanced data interoperability in healthcare?

When data flows seamlessly and securely between systems and organizations, healthcare professionals gain a more accurate, real-time picture of a patient’s health. This is crucial for forming diagnoses, drafting up treatment plans, and complying with healthcare obligations.

There’s also a wider data privacy advantage to interoperability, too. With faster access to patient data, organizations are better able to respond to data access requests within the dictated timeframe.

What are the benefits for patients and clinicians?

Data interoperability has the potential to revolutionize clinician operations and patient experiences. When implemented correctly, it can enable:

• One source of truth. With seamless and secure data sharing, healthcare organizations are better able to implement single patient records (SPR). These provide a truly holistic, comprehensive profile of a patient's health – ranging from their historical GP appointments to their most recent flu jab at the local pharmacy.
• Greater patient control. SPRs are accessible to patients, giving them greater control over their data and a clearer understanding of their medical history.
• Faster medical decisions. There’s no need for clinicians to chase external partners, scan through research articles, or ask IT for access to a disparate system. All the data they need is within touching distance, ready to inform their medical decisions.
• Better external collaboration. Healthcare organizations that adopt the same data standards and data exchange models are better able to collaborate and share insights. This can be especially useful for sharing research findings or providing crucial medical details – such as blood type or allergies – when a patient receives treatment abroad.

The challenges of interoperability in healthcare

Foundational interoperability, whereby data passes between two systems without intervention, may be easy enough. But the task becomes more complex the wider you cast your net.

The trouble is, while many healthcare organizations have a pool of useful data to hand, it’s often muddied by poor data practices. It lives in disparate and decentralized systems; there’s no consistent standardization or formatting; and some data sets may even contain errors or duplications. The data exists, but it’s in no fit state to exchange between systems, locations, or external providers.

Beyond these challenges, healthcare organizations must also navigate the tricky minefield of data security and privacy. Highly sensitive PHI data should never be handled lightly or exchanged between systems without rigorous security measures in place.

All of this to say: in order to prepare for data interoperability, you need to make your data usable, uniform, and secure.

To get you started, here are 5 quick tips.

5 tips for facilitating data interoperability in your organization

1. Take stock of your systems and regulatory obligations

First, assess the current state of your data ecosystem. How do you collect your patient and medical data and where does it live? How does it flow between systems? Do you have any apparent data standardization issues or interoperability gaps?

At this stage, it’s also worth refreshing your regulatory knowledge. Read through the applicable legal frameworks you must abide by and underline any data-related guidance. This will ensure you balance your data interoperability needs with patient privacy rights.

Build a roadmap that plugs any gaps in your data practices, whether it’s digitizing your paper-based observation notes, implementing new security measures, or — as our next point covers — adopting a global data standard.

2. Adopt global data standards

Data exchange requires uniform standardization. Fortunately, Health Level Seven (HL7) provides a range of global industry standards, specifically designed for healthcare organizations. The HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard is current best practice, as it’s free, easy-to-implement and harnesses a flexible, API-focused design.

Notably, HL7 FHIR contains clear resource build blocks that cover the breadth of healthcare operations, including “Patient” and “Observation”. Organizations can then adapt these resources to suit company-specific or local requirements using profiles and extensions.

By adopting these universal standards, you’ll be better prepared to exchange data, collaborate with providers, and satisfy regulators.

3. Invest in systems that speak to each other

Consider your organization’s current technology ecosystem, from your appointment scheduling software to your digital workplace and enablement platforms.

Can you exchange data between these systems? Or is data siloed in each respective platform, inaccessible to everyone without a login?

To accommodate data interoperability, you’ll need to invest in solutions that integrate seamlessly — ideally via API. Take Claromentis as an example. Designed for highly regulated industries, our digital workplace supports third-party integrations and single sign-on (SSO), allowing clinicians to unify data and access systems seamlessly. You can also use the solution to centralize many of your operations, such as appointment booking, observation logging, and medication reports. Which in turn helps you rein in your dispersed data sets.

To put it simply: data interoperability is much easier to achieve if you consolidate your systems and build connections between them.

4. Bolster your data governance

Data interoperability will only work when it’s built on a foundation of data governance. To complement your systems and data standards:

• Draft policies that outline best practices — including who can and cannot handle certain PHI — and enforce acceptance. Claromentis’ policy management application contains built-in acknowledgement mechanisms and an AI-powered Q&A assistant to help you achieve this.
• Publish knowledge base articles in a searchable repository to assist your teams. This may include step-by-step instructions for following FHIR standards, semantic naming conventions, and formatting advice.
• Create trackable e-learning courses that support data governance, security, and privacy knowledge, and provide automated training records to help you demonstrate regulatory compliance.

5. Implement additional security controls

As we mentioned earlier, data interoperability should never come at the expense of data privacy. That’s why it’s important to parse through your systems and implement additional security controls wherever you can.

Encrypt your data in-rest and in-transit. Finely control data access with granular roles and user permissions to ensure only authorized individuals can view PHI. Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for every user — regardless of how “small” their role in your organization may be. And, if possible, lock down highly sensitive documents with IP-based restrictions.

Make data interoperability your top priority

If data interoperability isn’t already on your healthcare organization’s priority list, it ought to be. Not only because regulators and governments are pushing for it, but because your patients deserve it.

Fast, secure data exchange improves patient care exponentially, whether you’re collaborating with different departments in your organization or healthcare centers across the globe. It also gives patients greater control over their data and confidence in your treatment plans.

But in order to facilitate this seamless flow of data, you must first reevaluate your data practices, tech stack, and PHI safeguards. In some cases, you may even need to adopt new technology — whether it’s a data management platform to clean-up your data sets, or a digital workplace solution that centralizes access to this data for your staff.

At Claromentis, our HIPAA-compliant digital workplace can help with the latter. Comprising intranet, knowledge base, policy management, e-learning, and process automation capabilities, Claromentis provides a centralized hub for your healthcare operations and compliance efforts. It also supports API integrations, empowering you to connect your wider systems and consolidate your standardized data, ready for staff members to interpret. Built-in security controls — including two-factor authentication and granular user permissions — ensure this data is safe from unauthorized access. Meaning your experts can analyze data, collaborate with external systems and providers, and deliver better experiences, all without compromising compliance.

Have we piqued your interest? To find out more about how Claromentis could help your healthcare organization transform its operations, book a 10-minute discussion call with one of our experts.

Healthcare data interoperability FAQs

What is an example of interoperability in healthcare?

Here’s one example of interoperability in healthcare, illustrating the exchange of data between systems:

A patient feels unwell and books an appointment with their local GP. The GP conducts a blood test and sends the sample off to a lab, where the lab technicians analyze the blood and log the results — following FHIR standards. This data can then be sent to a regional health information exchange (HIE), where the GP can log in and access the results. There’s no need to chase anyone or request manual access. The data is there, ready for interpretation.

Other examples may include; hospitals sharing patient data with social services or care home providers to ensure effective handover of care; patients accessing their own medical records via digital single patient records (SPR); and the exchange of research data across global healthcare providers.

What are the 4 levels of interoperability in healthcare?

The 4 levels of data interoperability are:

1. Foundational. This is the simplest form of interoperability, usually referring to the uninterrupted exchange of data between two healthcare systems (often via an API).
2. Structural or syntactic. Data is standardized into a determined format (usually via data fields) so that it’s ready to be interpreted or used.
3. Semantic. At this level, systems are able to understand data sets even if they follow different structures. This is because the systems both have a shared “vocabulary” in relation to the data. For instance, two healthcare organizations may call the same medication a different name, but if they associate that medication with a universal code and map this association in a database, the systems will automatically understand how to interpret it.
4. Organizational. This refers to the critical data governance, frameworks, policies, and culture that makes interoperability possible.

What is HL7 in healthcare?

Health Level Seven (HL7) is a set of international messaging standards that help healthcare organizations share data between systems and providers. It’s the cornerstone of interoperability in modern healthcare.

Their standards include Version 2 and 3 Messaging Standards (V2 and V3), Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).