Breaking the Healthcare Interoperability Barrier by Empowering and Engaging Actors in the Healthcare System

There is an increasing need for an interoperable healthcare data system that provides a shared common view of the essential data for a person to any healthcare provider involved in the circle of care regardless of where provider or person are physically located or what organization they belong to. This paper introduces a framework that characterizes the essential elements of such a system: minimal data set, information technology architecture, and legal governance. We evaluate related work and propose a cloud-based portal and a web-service API for accessing and managing shared data. The proposal is evaluated and compared using a representative usage scenario from community care.