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By NINA TALLEY, MedSpeaks

In late August, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce, came together to sign a pledge of healthcare data interoperability. Although short on specifics as to the actual schematics of their implementation plan, the statement did make one thing crystal clear. The key to frictionless exchange of data is open standards and open source tools. Essentially stating that no one company should have the right to hold the keys to the healthcare data kingdom. That if we want health data interoperability, we all have to use the same tools, and those tools must be available to everyone.

The idea of open source, easily accessible and free-to-use development tools is by no means a new development. Most tech giants, like Adobe, Facebook, and Google, have been utilizing open source development for years. But the healthcare industry has been widely reluctant to utilize open source standards for the development of EHR software, largely due to misplaced security concerns. Patient data is of the highest sensitivity and needs to be protected at all costs, but open source systems have proven themselves to be no more vulnerable than their proprietary counterpoints, and it appears healthcare may finally be getting that message.

With the EHR landscape as it stands, small businesses are chained to large vendors such as Cerner or Epic. But even with these titans of industry creating Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to give hospital developers access to their stored patient data, there are still large drawbacks. For example, Epic's EHR API only allows you to extract data. While this improves data analytics, it drastically limits the amount of new value that can be added to the clinical experience. In order to improve hospital workflows in any meaningful way, you must be able to write new data in to a database.

So what does widely adopted open source interoperability EHR standards mean for entrepreneurs? Everything. No longer being chained to privatized systems and their proprietary restrictions means that hospitals may finally be able to be truly third-party vendor agnostic. It is also likely to kick-off a "dataquake," a term coined by John Doerr, chairman of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. Stores of data that were previously inaccessible to small businesses will now allow applications and data-dependent technologies, such as artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, to thrive in a healthcare setting. This will likely create a new era of medical application developments, with real-time patient data unlocking technology innovations across the board.

However, the pledge was merely the first step. The healthtech renaissance will not come overnight. There are currently no announced plans for the implementation of these open source interoperability standards. What's more, it will be very difficult for startups that will be depended upon to rapidly innovate around these new standards, to solidify strong business models without any clear terms of service. There are even those such as Cerner President, Zane Burke, who questions the impact of the pledge. It would be more helpful if the tech giants committed to sharing their data with EHR vendors, he says, but that it is "a positive first step by companies that haven't been associated with this in the past."

Regardless, the pledge serves as a breath of fresh air for healthcare technology developers and enthusiasts. A proverbial light at the end of the interoperability tunnel, this announcement may well mark a change in the tide of EHR application development. We can only keep our fingers on the pulse of the industry, and prepare ourselves to seize on this opportunity as it begins to present itself.

Read the Full Pledge Below:

We are jointly committed to removing barriers for the adoption of technologies for healthcare interoperability, particularly those that are enabled through the cloud and AI. We share the common quest to unlock the potential in healthcare data, to deliver better outcomes at lower costs.

In engaging in this dialogue, we start from these foundational assumptions:

• The frictionless exchange of healthcare data, with appropriate permissions and controls, will lead to better patient care, higher user satisfaction, and lower costs across the entire health ecosystem.

• Healthcare data interoperability, to be successful, must account for the needs of all global stakeholders, empowering patients, healthcare providers, payers, app developers, device and pharmaceuticals manufacturers, employers, researchers, citizen scientists, and many others who will develop, test, refine, and scale the deployment of new tools and services.

• Open standards, open specifications, and open source tools are essential to facilitate frictionless data exchange. This requires a variety of technical strategies and ongoing collaboration for the industry to converge and embrace emerging standards for healthcare data interoperability, such as HL7 FHIR and the Argonaut Project.

• We understand that achieving frictionless health data exchange is an ongoing process, and we commit to actively engaging among open source and open standards communities for the development of healthcare standards, and conformity assessment to foster agility to account for the accelerated pace of innovation.

Together, we believe that a robust industry dialogue about healthcare interoperability needs will advance this cause, and hence are pleased to issue this joint statement.

Signed by,

Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce

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