The techUK podcast: Interoperability in the health and social care sector

The techUK Podcast - Interoperability within the Health and Social Care Sector

techUK was delighted to be joined by Andrew Frangleton, Clinical Architecture, Fiona Dawson, Mayden, Alex Eavis, EMIS and Jon Payne, InterSystems to discuss interoperability within the healthcare system, the current challenges and some potential solutions to the problem too!

Whilst there is no agreed upon definition of what interoperability is, nor a consensus on how to achieve it, it’s generally understood to be the ability to for different health and social care information systems to ‘speak to each other’ and provide the right information, at the right time, to the right person .

Indeed, interoperability was identified in an internal survey of techUK’s Health and Social Care members as the most pressing concern within the sector, this podcast covers themes such as mandating and setting standards and if they really would improve the flow of data across and between organisation.

This issue has only grown in scale and importance in recent years with the formalisation of Integrated Care Systems as legal entities in 2022 and the intrinsic need for data to flow across healthcare organisations both locally, regionally and nationally. As the sector moves to a more preventative focused model in the future, putting the emphasis on patients to better manage their own healthcare data, ensuring systems are interoperable will only increase in importance.

Listen to hear more about why interoperability is important, the challenges and barriers to achieving interoperability, the main opportunities to improve interoperability, what more the NHS and the Department of Health & Social Care could be doing and what more industry could be doing to achieve a truly interoperable Health & Social Care sector.

If you would like to know more about the work techUK is doing in the interoperability space, please email robert.walker@techuk.org.

Finally, please do join us for techUK's Health and Care Summit on the 12th of September, which will include panels on interoperability and much more!

Groups

Digital Innovation in the Life Sciences Industry

techUK has launched a Life Sciences workstream, bringing together members actively working in drug discovery, digital therapeutics, data and AI, or those interested in moving into this space. As the Life Sciences sector looks to introduce digital health technologies into its portfolio, techUK are shaping the conversation.

Interoperability Working Group

The Interoperability Working Group will work towards achieving the vision set out in NHS England’s 2022 draft standards and interoperability strategy.

The group will aim to encourage the adoption of open standards and fluidity of data whilst recognising the commercial needs of members.

It will also focus on demonstrating the value of interoperability to NHS senior management and improving the abilities of SMEs to implement interoperability standards.