On June 23, 2014, AEGIS was invited by Janet M. Marchibroda, Director, Health Innovation Initiative and Executive Director, CEO Council on Health and Innovation to participate in a roundtable discussion on Advancing Interoperability and Electronic Information Sharing To Support Improvements in Health and Health Care. Other distinguished participants included organizations such as the American Medical Informatics Association, Allscripts, Siemens, Surescripts, IBM, United Health Group, and CHIME among many others.
The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) areas of focus for the roundtable included:
- Advancing an information foundation for improving health and health care
- Engaging consumers to improve quality, reduce costs, and improve the patient experience of care
- Advancing innovation through personalized and genomic medicine.
- Engaging employers in innovative actions that will improve health and wellness and the quality and cost-effectiveness of care
- Assuring patient safety in health IT, while preserving an environment that fosters the innovation for a rapidly changing health care system
AEGIS provided our industry insight on the following topics of discussion:
- Assessment of the Landscape
- Policy-Related Approaches for Addressing Gaps
- Emerging Approaches for Addressing Interoperability and Information Sharing
- Exploring Information Gaps and Next Steps
AEGIS was asked to assist in formulating BPC’s detailed approach and response on advancing interoperability and information sharing to support improvements in health and health care. We provided valuable insight into the BPC’s focus on Interoperability and electronic information sharing playing a critical and foundational role in delivery system and payment reforms. We provided additional value to these discussions by including a unified approach to the adoption of a single definition of interoperability to be accepted and used by industry. In addition – AEGIS identified the lack of specific standards that should be adopted. Some proposed approaches for BPC that were incorporated in these discussions included:
- Supporting an Automated Platform for Test Case Execution
- Documenting Best Practices for Audits and Work Flow Lifecycle of Testing
- Supporting an Environment for Re-Use of Testing Tools/Test Cases
- Promoting Beyond “Happy Path” (peer-to-peer) testing and ensuring Negative Testing
- Promoting Industry Reporting Metrics on how well their products and services ensure interoperability and not vendor lock-in.
We look forward to continuing this dialog through the BPC!