By Rocío Mellas
“I have the chance to travel to different parts of the world and spend time with different healthcare systems, but it is very difficult to find a common pattern of conduct. Many of the challenges facing healthcare systems are universal,” said Dominick Bizzarro at the Hospital Information Technologies Workshop being held at ExpoHospital 2014.
Dominick Bizzarro is the former CEO of the Healthcare Information Exchange – HIE – in New York, a body dedicated to the use of technology in the healthcare system, and is currently the Managing & Business Development Director at InterSystems.
During his presentation at the workshop, he spoke about the implementation of solutions for the exchange of healthcare information and explained why a strategic interoperability platform is essential for the integration and management of information. In fact, to emphasize the potential impact, he cited the case of clinical systems in the United States which are characterized by the diversity and complexity of their organization.
According to Bizzarro, there is a genuine correlation between improving the quality/security of care and investment. “We have to close the gaps and the key to that is strategic interoperability. There is a great emphasis on the implementation of the Electronic Health Record, because gathering information is a very important first step, but the EHR is not, in itself, enough to set up a patient-focused system, we must standardize and share information,” the expert said.
He also outlined that very often interoperability should be integrated and produced at healthcare centers, emphasizing that in these cases it is very important to have a road map so that everyone is working in the same direction, as the intention is to deliver value.
Finally, he took a moment to warn that suppliers of primary care need to interact with other doctors in different healthcare areas and that a failure to do so can lead to a breakdown in the process.
“These are the synergies that generate the most important changes and in Chile there is a wonderful culture of collaboration,” he concluded.
