Issues in Achieving Complete Interoperability while Sharing Electronic Health Records

Accessing health data and sharing with the team of professionals for providing continuity of care is a primary activity in healthcare environment. Enormous and frequent access, questions the measures adopted in maintaining confidentiality and privacy of patients Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Heterogeneity in EHRs and EHR systems introduce further complexities and restrictions to share data between independent hospitals or health-professionals. The problems of semantics, the difference between bounded and unbounded software systems and ascertaining security while sharing data add to the difficulty of achieving interoperability. This paper identifies various approaches and issues in achieving interoperability while sharing of EHRs.