The Road to a Nationwide Electronic Health Record System: Data Interoperability and Regulatory Landscape

This paper seeks to break down how a large scale Electronic Health Records system could improve quality of care and reduce monetary waste in the healthcare system. The paper further explores issues regarding regulations to data exchange and data interoperability. Due to the massive size of healthcare data, the exponential increase in the speed of data generation through innovative technologies, and the complexity of healthcare data types, the widespread of a large-scale EHR system has hit barriers. Much of the data available is unstructured or contained within a singular healthcare provider’s systems. To fully utilize all the data available, methods for making data interoperable and regulations for data exchange to protect and support patients must be made. Through angles addressing data exchange and interoperability, we seek to break down the constraints and issues that EHR systems still face and gain an understanding of the regulatory landscape