Semantic interoperability in HIT - : finally! get ready! It is coming soon to electronic healthcare records / Robin Raiford, Joyce Sensmeier

For years, there have been unresolved issues involving technical and semantic interoperability of healthcare information systems. This has stemmed from lack of a standardized vocabulary among clinical information systems. For more than 50 years, healthcare delivery has centered around the "visit," with a focus on what is happening to the patient only in today's visit or at the current administration. Semantic interoperability has huge implications for nurses who waste so much time asking patients questions they have answered 100 times before, but about which the data were not shared. When semantic operability is achieved between providers and between visits, nursing will be validating information, not collecting it for another round of redundant data entry. Nurses actually will have access to information from the previous visit including the patient's problems, medications, allergies and history before they ever see the patient.

Nursing.