By Healthcare Facilities Today

Implementing healthcare technologies is just the beginning. We need to plan how they will fit together, according to a blog by Jason Burke on the Information Week website.

Integration, interoperability, data quality, process automation analytics are simple to describe but can be quite hard to execute in today's business environments, Burke said. 

But enterprise architecture (EA) has gradually emerged to help institutions in many markets build new operating models and connect their as-is and to-be business strategies and IT capabilities. 

EA advocates in both academia and industry point to successful EA frameworks offering business - IT governance, standardization and more sophisticated software and information infrastructures, but it has not gained traction yet in healthcare, Burke said.

"A Certification Commission for Health Information Technology report on accountable care never mentions the concept of enterprise architecture. It generally avoids describing any actual IT framework. And a Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative report (registration required) offers a health IT shopping list with more than 10 items but overlooks the obvious status quo challenges: lots of software with very little process and data orchestration," Burke wrote in the blog.

Today's healthcare buzzword initiatives - population health, health information exchanges, health analytics, medical neighborhood models, performance and quality management - share common capabilities manageable through EA.

The industry's current preoccupation with electronic medical records (EMRs) is a necessary precursor to more cost-effective, data-driven healthcare, Burke said.

"But technology veterans know that buying more software and dumping data into warehouses does nothing to orchestrate sustainable business performance. Information availability does not equate to usability, and databases filled with electronic versions of paper document structures do not naturally improve health outcomes or financial performance."

Read the blog.