Health IT

Consultant: It’s time for a health IT interoperability manifesto

"It gives clarity, it gives purpose and it gives tenets," healthcare interoperability consultant Michael Planchart said about his proposed National Health IT Interoperability Manifesto.

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When it comes to interoperability in healthcare, there’s been a lot of talk and not much action. So, now, despite lots of initiatives, alliances and a national roadmap, one consultant believes it’s time for a manifesto, with clearly defined principles and goals.

“It gives clarity, it gives purpose and it gives tenets,” healthcare interoperability consultant Michael Planchart said about his proposed National Health IT Interoperability Manifesto, which he called for in a blog post two weeks ago. Planchart wants to model it on the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, a 2001 plan to improve software.

The idea came from working with a long-term care provider in 2014. “Their interoperability is near zero,” said Planchart, who lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “I realized it wouldn’t happen without a grass-roots movement.”

His plan is to get together a diverse group of stakeholders, then start crafting the manifesto. Planchart has asked via his blog and social media for a maximum of 20 people, each representing a different segment of healthcare, to pledge to participate. So far, seven people are on board, according to Planchart.

“The manifesto should have clear and concise tenets,” Planchart said. “You can’t craft a manifesto by itself.”

After that, the group he convenes will come up with principles. “Then the difficult work starts,” he said. “What we don’t know how to do is evangelize.”

Planchart expect the process to take 6-12 months. He hopes will take a month or two to get the stakeholder group, then a couple of months to write the manifesto and principles, plus another three months so to develop concrete goals. “You will start seeing tangible results in about 90 days,” Planchart promised.

So why is now the time for a manifesto, given all the other activity around interoperability and access to data? “Everybody talks about interoperability, but they all have a different idea about it,” Planchart said. “They’re lost in the technology.”

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s interoperability roadmap, finalized in October, is an “ambition,” according to Planchart.

The federal government’s plan, spelled out in the Meaningful Use Stage 3 regulations that won’t take effect until at least 2017 — if at all — calls for application programming interfaces to build interoperability.

Planchart is skeptical because he said one API standard in particular, Fast Health Interoperable Resources, turns the standards development organization into a group of programmers. “I don’t think they should be doing that,” he said.

The manifesto won’t get into which standards to use. “The technology world will figure it out,” Planchart said.

Nor does he wish the manifesto to compete with any existing project or alliance. “It’s to bring people together,” he said.

Another grass-roots movement, Get My Health Data, a consumer effort to people to demand copies of their medical records, effectively making consumers the interoperability hub, does not have any formal guiding principles. , at least not formally. “It’s like a parade,” Planchart said.

He said it does not reach people at the grass roots of health IT development, which is what Planchart is trying to do with his manifesto.

Photo: Bigstock

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