U.S. Congress Refining the Definition of Interoperbilty in Regards to EHRs
A Bill passed to Congress by the ONC attempts to redefine interoperability in EHRs, it proposes that in order for health information technology to be considered interoperable it must: have secure transfer of all electronically accessible information, allow individuals' complete access to their patient records and have no information blocking. The bill's authors hope to see it signed into law in 2018.
It’s been a tough time for advocates of giving patients the ability to access and share their electronic medical record data with a third party through a personal health record or patient portal. The move to scale back the HITECH Act’s Meaningful Use Stage 2 provision has been a difficult pill t0 swallow.

But Flow Health Chief Privacy Officer David Harlow explained at the MedCity ENGAGE conference why he is continuing to push for an interoperable system and what that might look like.

Harlow is also part of the Get My Health Data Movement.

“What I would like to see and what I think we can see in the very near term is creating really what I would refer to as an operating system for healthcare – an operating system that is able to pull records from multiple providers, create a longitudinal health record of complete EHR data that’s accessible to patients, to providers, to caregivers, to payers so that folks can see what that means all in one place,” Harlow said.

“Meaningful interoperability can be achieved in the near term,” he also said.

You can listen to Harlow’s vision for the future of electronic medical records here.

Photo: Flickr user Karl-Ludwig Poggemann