Hello all,
Great discussion, one that is difficult to stay away from.
Thank you all, there are some very important thoughts and resources that have been shared by the participants.
I think the question posed by the moderator was on advantage of interoperability. I will start with my thoughts on that. In the current scenario, where we have multiple platform for disease specific reporting or function specific (logistics, service delivery, etc.) for aggregate reporting and them EMRs or some mhealth applications for community reporting, interoperability is a tool to improve decision-making at multiple levels of the health system. i would strongly encourage that teams/countries thinking of interoperability should think of the USE CASES first i.e. what do we want to achieve. Use cases help in one, documenting the health systems vision and then breaking it down into bite size pieces or phases.
Here, i will connect with the other participants. Once we have the phased approach, mapping data exchange between existing aggregate or client level is a cake. if there are aggregate system (only) we start with that, if there are some EMRs we should definitely include them as well.
Manish talked about architecture and requirements. These (+standards) are, in my view, building blocks for interoperability. The architechture helps identify what goes where and how and requirements and use cases guide ‘why’. Another advantage of doing this early in the planning phase is that it helps in identifying the solution to support interoperability.
Dave, thanks for sharing all the great resources. These will be very helpful in keeping ourselves up-to-date.
So, getting back to the moderators question, i would be really interested in hearing ‘what are the advantages of interoperability that are out there/being implemented?
