The world of economics has decided on this debate a long time ago: monopolies are bad, diversity is good. No matter what a monopoly promises, you can rest assure that over time the lack of competition will cause prices to go up and quality to go down. When it comes to healthcare IT, however, there is one unique factor that flips the coin – interoperability. Despite various attempts the healthcare industry has yet to solve the interoperability challenge in a satisfactory manner which will enable a full continuum of care across different health information systems within a health delivery organization. Taking a common scenario of prescribing a medication order in theatres using a surgical system to be later administered in a ward requires significant investment to achieve, even using the modern Fast Health Interoperability Resource (FHIR) protocol. The investment required to streamline the data flow across systems raise in an exponential order with every new system that is thrown to t
By Eran David