A Brief Reflection on 3 decades of interoperability at The IHE USA Connectathon conference

My bit from the IHE Connectathon conference today in summary:

What do we want? We want our data.  When do we want it?  Yesterday.  We’re now entering our third decade into attention on interoperability in healthcare. Hopefully, it’s not same stuff, different decade (SSDD). In the naughts, we focused on what we aught to do ... build interoperable systems.  In the teens, we focused on interoperability in the betweens, between providers, and to some extent between providers and patients.  In the twenties, my hope is that we focus on what our want is...

What have we learned over the last two decades?  We need standards, multiple standards, to support interoperability [standards are like potato chips, you cannot just have one].  Standards are essential.  Good standards make it easy for smart people to create interoperable solutions.  What we actually need are GREAT standards, because great standards make it possible for ANYONE to interoperate.