Commentary highlights call to ‘cross the finish line' to full interoperability

In a commentary published Saturday in Modern Healthcare, AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack and Federation of American Hospitals President and CEO Chip Kahn illustrate why it’s so important for the nation to fully achieve the secure exchange of patient health data and highlight what it will take. “Imagine if your iPhone could only ring other iPhones, but not connect calls or send text messages to Android-based mobile devices,” they say. “That wouldn’t render your phone useless, but its value as a communications tool would be greatly diminished. The telecommunications sector has wisely avoided this situation, designing connectivity systems that bridge technical variations between manufacturers, models and operating systems. We must do the same for patients. Our recently released report, ‘Sharing Data, Savings Lives’ (AHA.org/interoperability) is a collaborative wake-up call from seven of the nation’s leading hospital associations about the critical importance of crossing the finish line to full interoperability of patient health data.”