INTEROPERABILITY OF PATIENT-CARE TECHNOLOGIES

To encourage interdisciplinary development and implementation of standards that foster foundational, structural, semantic, and organizational interoperability of health information technology (HIT); further,

To encourage the integration, consolidation, and harmonization of medication-related databases used in patient-care technologies to reduce the risk that outdated, inaccurate, or conflicting data might be used and to minimize the resources required to maintain such databases; further,

To encourage healthcare organizations to adopt HIT that utilizes industry standards and can access, exchange, integrate, and cooperatively use data within and across organizational, regional, and national boundaries.

Rationale

The interoperability of patient-care technologies should be a standard across any hospital or health system. The development and implementation of standards would promote timely and seamless portability of information and optimize patient-care technologies that utilize medication-related databases. The installation of these technologies will aid pharmacy data, data analytics, and support activities that mitigate medication errors, medication diversion, and other health outcomes. This form of uniformity in information sharing will increase workflow efficiency and reduce delay in duties for pharmacy and other healthcare workers.

Although it is important to recognize the differences among technologies used in patient care, there is a need to have both a standardized format to describe medications as well as means for efficiently managing the medication databases in order to safely populate and update the different technologies that rely on drug information. Coalitions such as the Pharmacy e-Health Information Technology Collaborative are important in providing expertise, organizing and participating in stakeholder events, and advocating for best practices. It may, however, be necessary for other organizations to convene stakeholders to develop standards for the harmonization of medication-related databases.