Do We Need Skinny Healthcare Interoperability?

I’ve written previously about the idea of skinny data in healthcare instead of big data. It’s an important concept that I think many are putting into practice. Today in a LinkedIn thread discussing our post on “What If EMR Interoperability Was Mandatory?” Rolando Merino, MD suggested what I think could be called skinny healthcare interoperability.

If you are convinced that your idea is good, and everyone you pitch it to – resists; then re-evaluate your idea. I think that there must be bit of a danger to the idea. We need the market to provide incentives to developers and users. Without it, there will be no innovation. What would be the advantage for a big insurance company to have all their beneficiaries records to the next biggest competitor? To require things that are not meaningful or useful from people that are used to being very meaningful and useful (healthcare providers and software developers) causes stifling of the creative process. For example: software that saves lives (like APACHE in the ICU?) every time, all the time, that does not even need any interconnectivity at all, would be out. I think that careful evidence based recommendations of what information actually saves lives, need to be made.