In a sector where every second counts, healthcare technology vendors can no longer afford to treat interoperability as a side concern. For too long, closed ecosystems and protective vendor strategies have limited data exchange and collaboration, creating bottlenecks that ultimately impact patient outcomes. Shifting to a model where integration is treated as a strategic imperative—not a compliance checkbox—can unlock enormous value. When systems are designed to work together, each minute saved from eliminating roadblocks becomes a minute returned to clinicians and patient care.
The Problem with Walled Gardens
Historically, many health tech vendors have built closed systems designed to keep users within a single product suite. The standard playbook often involves creating a protected ecosystem, making integration with competitors’ solutions difficult, and encouraging healthcare organisations to commit fully to one vendor’s platform. While this approach may seem beneficial in the short term for vendors, it introduces significant challenges for healthcare providers. These strategies create artificial barriers that slow down workflows and complicate the already complex IT environments that exist in most healthcare settings.
In practice, ripping and replacing entire systems is neither realistic nor cost-effective. Healthcare IT infrastructures are rarely uniform; they are the result of years—even decades—of incremental decisions. New tools are added or retired based on available resources, emerging needs and evolving priorities. To expect a hospital or healthcare organisation to abandon this complex web and start over is impractical. Starting a partnership with this demand can come across as presumptuous and is likely to be counterproductive. Rather than insisting on homogeneity, vendors must recognise the reality on the ground and build for interoperability from the outset. A different philosophy is required—one that sees integration as a value, not a threat.
Real-World Scenarios Where Integration Matters
Interoperability is not an abstract ideal; it is essential to daily clinical operations and can directly influence outcomes. Consider a stroke patient arriving at an emergency room. Their medical history may be spread across several systems: an ePCR from an ambulance service, a primary care EHR and data from previous visits stored in various hospital systems. The ability to access that information quickly can increase the patient’s chances of a positive outcome.
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Similarly, consider an oncologist coordinating care for a patient who requires input from multiple specialists. If each specialist uses a different platform for communication or documentation, and if these systems do not exchange data seamlessly, vital information, such as medication changes or adverse reactions, may be missed. Even time-sensitive alerts, like critical lab results indicating dangerous potassium levels, rely on integration. The lab system, EHR and clinical communication platform must all work together. When they do, urgent responses can happen in seconds instead of minutes. This difference can be crucial for patient safety.
Cloud and Microservices: The New Backbone of Interoperability
Fortunately, modern cloud-based solutions can remove many of the hurdles that previously made integration complex and costly. These systems use standardised APIs to connect across platforms with less friction, removing the need to maintain heavy infrastructure on site. Updates are applied across all channels in real time, ensuring consistency. Clinicians no longer have to search for information manually—it is delivered automatically, where and when it is needed.
Security is not compromised in this model. Protocols like OAuth 2.0 ensure that sensitive information is only accessed by authorised personnel, even as systems remain open and connected. Underpinning this is microservices architecture, which enables individual components of the software to be updated independently. This reduces the risk of downtime and allows systems to evolve continuously without disruption.
These event-driven platforms are also capable of consuming contextual data, such as staff schedules, roles and communication preferences, so that alerts and messages reach the right person, at the right time, using the right method. This ensures efficiency and effectiveness in communication, particularly in urgent situations.
The case for interoperability becomes stronger when considering the scalability and resilience of these platforms. With the right integration platform, cloud-based systems can handle millions of transactions daily, respond instantly, manage spikes in demand and self-heal if connections are interrupted. They also simplify compliance and troubleshooting through built-in auditability and support rapid adoption of new tools through pre-built connection points.
The case for interoperability is clear—and urgent. Achieving it is not cheap or easy. It requires sustained investment, technical innovation and a willingness to collaborate with competitors. But the rewards are immense: streamlined workflows, improved care coordination, better patient outcomes and stronger partnerships with provider organisations. The industry must shift away from “business as usual,” where protecting market share takes precedence over patient safety. Interoperability should be embraced not as a buzzword, but as a guiding principle and strategic priority. Ultimately, the vendors who win will be those who choose to build bridges, not walls.
Source: MedCity News
Image Credit: Freepik
