How ‘promoting interoperability’ will take health data sharing to another level

The meaningful use EHR incentive program served its purpose of getting hospitals to implement electronic health records platforms. Now, renamed as promoting interoperability, the next phase is to advance the federal government’s approach to enabling those organizations to actually share health data more effectively.

“The job of meaningful use is done, now it’s a rebranding of the program to focus on the interoperability piece,” said Jeff Coughlin, senior director, Federal and State Affairs for HIMSS. “This was definitely in line with a lot of what...