Six of the world's biggest technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, IBM and Amazon, made a joint pledge at the White House Monday to remove interoperability barriers and to make progress on adoption of health data standards.
The announced came during the Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference in Washington, D.C. where Microsoft joined with Amazon, Google, IBM, Salesforce and Oracle to jointly commit to support healthcare interoperability by advancing healthcare standards such as HL7 (Health Level Seven International), FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), and the Argonaut Project. They also pledged to remove interoperability barriers, particularly as it relates to the adoption of technologies enabled through the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI).
Dean Garfield, president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, said in a statement, “Today’s announcement will be a catalyst to creating better health outcomes for patients at a lower cost. As transformative technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence continue to advance, it is important that we work towards creating partnerships that embrace open standards and interoperability.
“We commend the White House Office of American Innovation for their leadership in being a catalyst for moving health care beyond siloed systems and varied data standards. As well, we celebrate Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce for their commitment to helping to advance open healthcare standard. The opportunity to unleash greater innovation in health care is here and working together we can seize it,” Garfield said.
In a joint statement, the technology companies made a commitment to remove barriers to “frictionless data exchange,” noting that they share “the common quest to unlock the potential in healthcare data, to deliver better outcomes at lower costs.”
The commitment specifically states:
“In engaging in this dialogue, we start from these foundational assumptions: The frictionless exchange of healthcare data, with appropriate permissions and controls, will lead to better patient care, higher user satisfaction, and lower costs across the entire health ecosystem.
Healthcare data interoperability, to be successful, must account for the needs of all global stakeholders, empowering patients, healthcare providers, payers, app developers, device and pharmaceuticals manufacturers, employers, researchers, citizen scientists, and many others who will develop, test, refine, and scale the deployment of new tools and services.
Open standards, open specifications, and open source tools are essential to facilitate frictionless data exchange. This requires a variety of technical strategies and ongoing collaboration for the industry to converge and embrace emerging standards for healthcare data interoperability, such as HL7 FHIR and the Argonaut Project.
We understand that achieving frictionless health data exchange is an ongoing process, and we commit to actively engaging among open source and open standards communities for the development of healthcare standards, and conformity assessment to foster agility to account for the accelerated pace of innovation.”
Gregory J. Moore M.D., Ph.D., vice president of healthcare, Google Cloud, said in a statement, “We are pleased to join others in the technology and healthcare ecosystem in this joint commitment to remove barriers and create solutions for the adoption of technologies for healthcare data interoperability. This will enable the delivery of high quality patient care, higher user satisfaction, and lower costs across the entire healthcare ecosystem.”
Patients should have access to their data, said Mark Dudman, head of global product and AI development, IBM Watson Health, in a statement following the announced commitment. Patients also should have the flexibility to use products and services across different healthcare systems, with confidence that they all are working seamlessly for their care, he said. “We are proud to participate in this pledge and look forward to working with industry and the developer community to ensure appropriate access to data and the use of that data to support vibrant communities and solve health challenges for people everywhere.”
In a blog post, Josh Mandel, chief architect, Microsoft Healthcare, notes that interoperability is an overlapping set of technical and policy challenges, from data access to common data models to information exchange to workflow integration – and these challenges often pose a barrier to healthcare innovation.
Mandel, who previously worked at Google Life Sciences and on the research faculty at Boston Children’s Hospital where he worked on the SMART Health IT Platform, notes that support for the Meaningful Use Common Clinical Data Set grows and it is becoming easier to plug new tools into clinical workflows, analyze clinical histories, collect new data, and coordinate care.” Many of these technical capabilities have been available within small, tight-knit health systems for a long time – but developing these capabilities has required complex, custom engineering and ongoing maintenance and support. Driving toward open architecture makes adoption faster, easier and cheaper,” he wrote.
True interoperability in healthcare requires end-to end solutions, rather than independent pieces, which may not work together, Mandel wrote. “Transforming healthcare means working together with organizations across the ecosystem. Today’s joint interoperability statement reflects the feedback from our healthcare customers and partners, and together we will lay a technical foundation to support value-based care.”
