Discussion on Standards and Interoperability (Essay Sample)

Standards and Interoperability
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Standards and Interoperability
The overall purpose of healthcare information system standards is to ensure that clinical and patient safety systems are using a unified information infrastructure that can support effective integration and sharing of new knowledge thereby refining decision making and the care process. Healthcare information system standards also allow healthcare organizations to lower application expenses, accelerate assimilation projects, and take advantage of common security and tooling. The interoperability of healthcare information systems allows data to be used in a coordinated way within and across institutions, regions, and countries thereby improving the health of individuals and populations. One common healthcare information system standard is the Health Level-7 or HL7, which was developed by Health Level Seven International, a non-profit organization that specializes in creating standards for the exchange of electronic health data (Pierotti, 2021). HL7 is one of the most widely implemented standards and has been adopted by several standards issuing bodies including the International Organization for Standardization and the American National Standards Institute. HL7 is broken into seven categories, each part with a specific purpose and set of rules that build on the previous categories.
The standard’s first form, Version 2 Messaging Standard, was released in 1987 and has been updated recurrently ever since including its other form Version 3 Messaging Standard, which was released in 1995 to meet new clinical interface needs (Shaver, 2019). The first HIPAA violation and security breach that I found alarming is that of a former Scripps health worker who stole patients’ protected information in order to make fraudulent pandemic unemployment insurance claims (HIPAA, 2021). This breach could have been avoided through a right access and privilege model augmented by encryption of all patient protected data. The second HIPAA violation breach incident that interested me involved MultiPlan, a medical payment billing service provider. An employee’s email was hacked so as to facilitate illegal wire transfers from the provider’s customers looking to pay invoices (HIPAA, 2021). This breach could have been avoided by encrypting email and server connecti