Guide to Healthcare Data Interoperability

With the healthcare landscape changing at breakneck speed, it's vital for healthcare organizations to keep up the pace when sharing information needed for critical, often life-or-death clinical decisions. It's a real issue reflected in recent research that found 72% of hospitals have information gaps, or patient data records with missing or incomplete information.

The reality is that many hospitals are working with fragmented systems, creating challenges that affect patient care.

Without robust healthcare data interoperability solutions that bridge disparate systems and provide a holistic view of a patient's health, providers are at greater risk of delayed treatments, medical errors, and significant legal or financial consequences. And, without interoperability, some of the most important advances and emerging technologies in healthcare would not achieve their full potential.

Interoperability in healthcare is the ability of different systems and providers to share and use patient information smoothly and securely to improve care. It happens when various healthcare software can work together and transfer information easily, allowing providers to access all patient data as they work to deliver safe and effective care. The goal is to provide stakeholders with a comprehensive understanding of all relevant data about a patient, a complete view that promotes smart engagement and a more connected patient journey.

Healthcare is getting closer than ever to that holistic view of every patient. Medical systems everywhere are now able to create a complete picture of the patient journey, thanks to software solutions that offer data consolidation, analytics, and secure storage capabilities.

These solutions provide a sweeping view of a patient's health information and data — accessed from multiple systems that might include electronic health records (EHRs), medical devices, and patient-generated data — to give providers a full picture of each patient's medical history, care plans, treatments, medications, and other relevant information. This helps providers make more informed decisions and personalize their care for each patient.

Data interoperability is especially crucial for healthcare because of the way it improves the patient experience. When providers can share information, patients benefit from faster and more accurate diagnoses, better care coordination, and less duplication of tests and procedures. It makes providers more efficient and effective, too, by improving the speed and viability of their clinical decisions, helping prevent medical errors, and streamlining and automating administrative tasks like sending prescriptions to pharmacies.

All of this adds up to better patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs. By consolidating patient data, technology solutions offer a unified view of patient data, allowing providers to use the power of artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and data integration to seamlessly collaborate with colleagues, tailor treatment plans, and automate manual tasks, directly improving patient safety and clinician workflow.

Platforms like Salesforce Health Cloud are designed to help interoperability by aligning its clinical data model with HL7 standards that include FHIR to enable seamless communication and data exchange with other healthcare systems that also use FHIR.

• FHIR and HL7: The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and Health Level 7 standards were developed to help healthcare organizations create seamless and secure data exchange for more efficient workflows and data-driven insights. They focus on the technical aspects of the exchange and how data is transmitted. HL7 is widely used in hospital systems for exchanging clinical documents while FHIR enables the efficient exchange of data such as patient demographics, vital signs, or allergies.
• USCDI: The U.S. Core Data for Interoperability standard focuses on the content of the data, providing a standardized set of health data classes and elements for nationwide interoperability. USCDI can be used to map data from different EHRs into a common format, making it easier to compare and analyze data.

Just as standards provide the language, modern technologies like AI, APIs, cloud computing, and blockchain provide the infrastructure that's so important to make sure the right information reaches the right person at the right time, securely and with optimal clinical impact.

New technology solutions are accelerating a shift toward proactive, personalized, and connected care. For example, integration platforms allow healthcare organizations to connect systems, harmonize data, and act on insights faster than ever. Clinical and administrative data can be extracted, assembled, and stored to provide a complete view of the patient, and AI tools can then analyze this unified data to identify gaps in care or predict health risks.

More than a technical achievement, data interoperability enables better healthcare for everyone involved. With a seamless exchange of accurate, real-time data across systems, providers can make more informed decisions. Patients can receive timely and coordinated care. And interoperability unlocks the potential for medical researchers to share data from a range of sources to help large-scale clinical studies and the development of new treatments.

When clinicians have access to a single, complete, and up-to-date view of all relevant information about a patient — including lab results, medication histories, care plans, and other patient records from multiple systems — they can provide more effective treatment. This is now a reality with solutions like Salesforce Health Cloud and Patient 360, which provide a unified view of a patient's health journey.

This integrated view of a patient's record is also invaluable for preventing redundant testing, medication conflicts, and treatment delays — and for streamlining handoffs of patients among primary care providers, specialists, and support services without the need to repeat their medical history at every appointment.

Data interoperability is also triggering significant operational gains for providers by replacing time-consuming manual data entry, fax-based communication, and siloed information systems. Integrated platforms enable the automated flow of information among systems by connecting EHRs, billing platforms, CRMs, and third-party applications. This allows providers to streamline the referral process, accelerate prior authorizations, and ensure complete documentation, all while maintaining compliance and security. This not only saves time and resources, but it also helps staff focus on patient care instead of paperwork.

Healthcare data interoperability is impacting the progress of medical research and public health by leveraging new solutions that lead to efficient pattern identification, treatment outcome evaluation, and the ability to pinpoint care gaps using large datasets created with interoperable systems. Healthcare organizations can take advantage of technology solutions that bring together real-time patient data from multiple sources into a structured, privacy-compliant environment to support collaborative research and help accelerate the development of treatments.

Healthcare data interoperability operates on four levels, each addressing a different aspect of data exchange and integration.

• Foundational interoperability, the most basic level, focuses on the ability of systems to transmit and receive data without interpretation, such as when a healthcare team shares a PDF discharge summary with the patient and the primary care physician. Many healthcare systems are operating at this level of basic data exchange today.
• Structural interoperability is the stage where data is structured to ensure it can be understood by both sending and receiving systems. One example is the use of standardized data formats such as HL7 to exchange information. While significant progress has been made in standardizing data formats, consistent implementation across healthcare systems remains a challenge.
• Semantic interoperability focuses on making sure systems understand the meaning of the data exchanged. Standardized terminologies and vocabularies such as SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms) are used, for example, to ensure consistent interpretation of clinical terms. Achieving this level of interoperability continues to be a significant challenge, requiring ongoing efforts to standardize data definitions and vocabularies.
• Organizational interoperability, the highest level of interoperability, encompasses the policies, procedures, and processes that govern data exchange. Achieving this level of interoperability will require the development of policies and governance structures that ensure data privacy, security, and compliance with relevant regulations. For healthcare, achieving this level of interoperability may require the establishment of data-sharing agreements among hospitals that comply with HIPAA and other regulations.

To move forward, healthcare organizations need the right mix of strategy, technology, and governance to navigate the barriers to interoperability. These are some of the main ones, along with how to overcome them.

A significant concern for any interoperability effort is how to share sensitive patient data while safeguarding privacy and maintaining compliance with regulations like HIPAA and GDPR. As data moves across systems, the risk of breaches and unauthorized access increases.

Salesforce addresses this challenge by building HIPAA-eligible infrastructure into Health Cloud and Data Cloud for Healthcare. To ensure secure data sharing across care teams and systems, these platforms include features like robust consent management, audit trails, role-based access controls, and encryption. In addition to taking advantage of these tools, healthcare organizations need to ensure these protections are maintained with strong internal policies and staff training.

The lack of standardized formats across EHRs, labs, imaging systems, and insurance platforms presents another persistent challenge. When different systems "speak different languages," even small formatting differences can cause critical data to be lost, misinterpreted, or duplicated.

This is where adherence to standards like FHIR, HL7, and USCDI becomes essential. Salesforce's Clinical Data Model and FHIR-compatible APIs are built to support these standards, enabling organizations to harmonize data and preserve its integrity across platforms. The success of these tools depends on coordinated implementation across all stakeholders.

Many healthcare organizations continue to rely on outdated, on-premise systems that were never designed to integrate with modern cloud platforms or APIs. These legacy systems create silos that are costly to maintain and difficult to connect.

MuleSoft , part of the Salesforce ecosystem, provides connectors and reusable APIs that bridge modern platforms and legacy infrastructure. With a well-planned integration strategy, health systems can modernize without the need to rip and replace every existing tool.

As interoperability becomes a policy priority, healthcare organizations must keep pace with evolving rules around information blocking, electronic access, and data sharing. Missteps can result in costly fines and reputational harm.

Salesforce enables compliance by building solutions around the latest regulatory standards and offering ongoing updates to reflect new requirements. For example, audit trail features and secure messaging tools help organizations remain compliant with patient access mandates. Yet, even with the support of these powerful tools, healthcare organizations need to be vigilant, ensuring close collaboration between IT, legal, and operations teams.

Interoperability is both a technical and cultural challenge, and achieving it requires collaboration across departments, shared goals between providers and payers, and a willingness to embrace new workflows. Resistance to change and lack of governance can jeopardize well-intentioned interoperability initiatives.

Salesforce supports this need for collaboration with tools, shared workspaces, and cross-functional dashboards. Commitment from leadership and engagement by staff will be needed to ensure a culture shift that takes advantage of these new interoperable systems.Best practices for achieving healthcare data interoperability

More than adopting the right technology, achieving data interoperability requires the implementation of a phased, strategic approach grounded in best practices. Following are five steps that can help healthcare organizations build a strong foundation of interoperability and sustain it over time.

• Assess your current systems: It is critical to understand the status of your organization's existing systems, workflows, data sources, and integration points and to identify any gaps, redundancies, and other bottlenecks that could be affecting data exchange. This discovery process can be automated with a solution like Salesforce Health Cloud, which can help you map data flows and pinpoint integration opportunities.
• Develop a strategic roadmap: After clearly defining your organization's overall objectives — important care coordination, reducing administrative overhead, or meeting regulatory requirements, for example — developing a phased roadmap that includes technology, policy, and people can help you achieve them.
• Adopt and implement industry data standards: Make sure your EHR and any third-party apps or partner platforms are sending and receiving data in formats aligned with FHIR, HL7, and USCDI.
• Test, validate, and secure data exchange: To validate that data is being exchanged accurately and securely, it's important to test for errors, ensure that data context is preserved, and verify compliance with HIPAA and other privacy and security standards.
• Maintain consistent monitoring and improvement: Healthcare organizations should continually monitor system performance, data quality, and user adoption. Establish KPIs, gather feedback from clinical and operational teams, and adjust your strategy as new technologies and regulations emerge.

HIPAA-compliant cloud-based platforms like Salesforce Health Cloud support interoperability by bringing together information from different EHR sources, with an engagement layer that sits on top of EHRs and breaks down data silos to bring healthcare data together on a single screen.

The future of healthcare data interoperability is being shaped by emerging technologies, evolving standards, and an increasing focus on patient empowerment, including:

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning will continue to play a critical role in optimizing data exchange by automating routine workflows, identifying gaps in care, and predicting health risks before they escalate.
• Standards like FHIR and USCDI will continue to mature, creating more consistent frameworks for interoperability across systems and organizations.
• With patient-controlled data, patients will increasingly expect seamless access to their digital health records and the ability to share that data across the providers, payers, and platforms of their choice. Interoperable systems like those built on Salesforce Health Cloud will be central to meeting that expectation while maintaining privacy and security.

Ultimately, the future of healthcare depends on the ability to share the right data with the right people at the right time. Interoperability is no longer a nice-to-have, it's a strategic imperative