Healthcare Interoperability

Poll: Can Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft really solve healthcare's interoperability problem? My response to the poll from HealthcareITnews

Although I have heard it throughout my career, I am excited and hopeful about the big technology companies getting involved in the effort to solve data interoperability. These vendors -- Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Salesforce -- have something that was not available five to 10 years ago: a platform, which was the biggest hurdle to interoperability. Here's a closer look at what the companies are doing.

• Amazon: Amazon Web Services has the platform for data quality and management, along with a data lake to store structured and unstructured information.

• Google: The Google Cloud Healthcare API engine supports everything from FHIR to DICOM in a secure manner.

• IBM: IBM's Bluemix incorporates the Watson health API and has a rich tool set.

• Microsoft: The Microsoft Azure platform helps incorporate connectors to third parties. Azure's ability to play well with other systems is a major strength.

• Salesforce: Salesforce's Health Cloud is moving the traditional customer relationship management offering of an engagement tool toward patient and population health. The company is working on making it a data platform with the acquisition of MuleSoft and development of Einstein.

The platform is ready. Now, the questions are, which tech giant will win the race, and will any of them work together to make data interoperability possible?

This article was also shared on the CHIME SmartBrief