Integration vs. interoperability: What’s the difference?

Search for “healthcare interoperability” on Google and you’ll receive over 36 million results. Interoperability has become a lasting buzzword in the clinical landscape, yet somewhat maddeningly, there seem to be many definitions. 

While the word interoperability and integration have the same prefix that means “between” and both refer to a level of data connectivity, they have very distinct definitions. Let’s unpack the differences.  

Defining Integration 

Salesforce describes integration as a process that “brings together component subsystems into one system, ensuring they function together as a unit.”  

When available, an integrated solution is a powerful thing. A good example of this is a company combining multiple purchased technologies into a singular application that solves a focused problem or set of problems. Spok has done this with our operator console, which aims to provide a complete communication and collaboration suite to our customers. 

Integration is the ideal that many organizations search for. The concept of a “completely integrated solution offering” from a single company that just does it all would make life simple for everyone, right? However, with such a broad focus in the healthcare space that includes records keeping, analytics, connectivity, communications, patient workflows, personal health practices, and many more functions, one solution to rule them all is impossible to deliver with quality. 

Additionally, a more integrated application environment with proprietary methods of connectivity or data sharing can slow the proliferation of the many innovative, disruptive point technologies we see produced from new vendors without a clear and easy path to connect them with other systems. 

In the real world, deploying multiple applications to do focused jobs in the enterprise is the norm, but to solve the complex problems facing organizations today, these solutions need to work together in an efficient and cost-effective manner for proper adoption. Enter interoperability. 

Defining Interoperability 

Interoperability is more advanced and meaningful than integration; it incorporates content from multiple disparate and entirely independent systems to advance the effective delivery of solutions to the market.  

With standards-based interoperability, such as HL7 and FHIR, vendors can provide efficient and repeatable solutions that help speed installation and configuration with new technologies. It’s a way of connecting key systems, people, and information to bring about new meaning, context, and clinical insights through a combination of multiple diverse data sources. Examples of interoperability include: 

• Bidirectionally sharing contact information between a clinical communication platform and a third-party scheduling solution or the EHR to ensure both solutions have the most up-to-date information via a standardized method 
• Incorporating location content from a location services device attached to an ambulatory monitor to track location information more accurately in an event or data capture 
• An alert management system combining important patient information—such as fall indicators or procedures from the EHR—into a nurse call message going to a clinician on any device while still allowing responses to be passed back to the nurse call system for call escalations or reporting 

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and many participating vendors are constantly working toward a higher level of interoperability, which includes the exchange of historical or actionable data electronically among disparate hospitals and health systems, patients, health plans, pharmacies, and labs.  

The Value of Interoperability 

Interoperability is critical for the efficiency and predictability to drive improved patient care and safety. Hospitals and health systems benefit greatly from a more interoperable environment.  

The first and most important benefit is trust. When healthcare IT vendors conform to the same standards of interoperability, hospital leaders can be assured that these systems can work together simply and reliably, with all vendors speaking the same language.  

Another benefit is faster and lower-cost implementations. Interoperability supports more predictable methods of implementation with multiple vendors while shortening the time and decreasing the cost of initial ownership for the overall solutions being deployed. In the clinical communications arena, interoperability between Spok and our partners is the engine that drives real-time clinical communications to the next level, with an entire suite of functions and meaning for a user’s mobile device. 

A key benefit of interoperability for healthcare IT companies like Spok is speed to market and the ability to spend more time focusing on new innovations. For example, as Spok uses interoperability standards to qualify or certify our conforming partners, we can deploy new interoperable solutions with little to no impact on development resources. This leaves us with much more time to execute what our solutions can do for our customers with data. 

Our Commitment to Interoperability 

Spok is deeply committed to advancing interoperability. Not only do we dedicate significant internal resources to enhancing the interoperability of the Spok Care Connect platform with more than 300 systems, but we also work closely with our partners and participate in international initiatives to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information.  

We’re also proud to actively participate in Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), an international organization committed to “enabling seamless and secure access to health information whenever and wherever needed.” I’m honored to serve as the IHE PCD (patient care devices) planning committee co-chair and IHE PCD ACM (alert communication management) working group lead.  

Interoperability Is the Future 

You can have a much easier, longer, and more complex conversation with someone who fluently speaks the same language as you. Similarly, when healthcare systems speak the same language, you can share more data and create new meaning. Interoperability is vital to connecting the dots along the continuum of care faster and, as a result, improving patient safety and satisfaction.