Advancing Healthcare Interoperability: Coordinating Model Development

Increasingly, the "models, models everywhere" challenge is considered a fundamental barrier to advancing full and ubiquitous healthcare interoperability (in the public and private sectors, in the US, and globally). As it impacts healthcare delivery, device and drug innovation, administrative and business efficiency, safety, data security, integration of electronic health records, and analyzing big data, the "models, models everywhere challenge" is very real. It is very expensive. We can do better by coordinating information models – a significant challenge in itself.

This White Paper serves both as a stand-alone document extending the work of the Healthcare Forum and as a primer for a two-day Technical Forum held August 2016 in Washington DC. This Forum, Information Modeling: Foundation to Semantic Interoperability, was co-sponsored by the DoD/VA Interagency Program Office (DoD/VA IPO), ONC’s Office of Standards & Technology (ONC OST), and the Federal Health Architecture (FHA).