Interoperability in Health Care

Interoperability in Health Care
Name
Affiliation
Course
Tutor
Interoperability in Health Care
Importance of data integrity in health care
Interoperability is the ability of computer systems to exchange and use information. The systems computer software engages and implements the use of block technology in health care, resulting in the delivery of efficient services in the facilities. Hence, the implementation of data integrity in health care yields various benefits in health care. First, data integrity protects patients' privacy by ensuring that all data sets are secured and only accessed by the right people (CSE Software Inc., 2014). On the other hand, should unauthorized individuals try to access the information, the engagement of data encryption in integrity helps in the conversion of the data into unreadable codes (CSE Software Inc., 2014). It also ensures that data used for the major decisions made on the treatment process of patients are correctly maintained, enhancing effectiveness in the delivery of services (CSE Software Inc., 2014). The management of a good data integrity plan keeps medical practices in the health care facilities in compliance, ensuring clients' trust in all provisions. Data integrity enhances back up all information needed and used in health care through processes like copying and archiving to enhance retrieval in the case of loss (CSE Software Inc., 2014). Data integrity has helped many health organizations in the maintenance of accurate and consistent information, improving the overall performance in the facilities.
 Barriers to interoperability and health information exchange.
Although the blockchain technology is beneficial in the implementation of interoperability, there exist some barriers that require attention to ensure effectiveness. The first barrier is the large volume and size of clinical data (Gordon & Catalini, 2018). The increment in data size is directly proportional to the advancement in technology. In this case, the improvements could not have the desired capability to deal with the amount of data if they do not advance consistently to keep pace with the sizes of data used in health care. “For example, a single cardiac Magnetic Resonance Image can require 200 megabytes in storage (Gordon & Catalini, 2018)." Is it possible to store such a size of data? The current levels of technology do not have the feasibility to store the data in the desired chain with the ongoing advancement in technology. Also, the verification of new transactions can take more than the expected time on the current technology considering the required proof. Thus, this limitation poses a primary challenge in the use of blockchain in health care.
The other challenge is privacy and security, despite the efforts used by data integrity to ensure confidentiality in patients’ data and information. “Some implementations of blockchain technology are pseudonymous—identity is typically obscured behind a public key, but other attributes of transactions are publicly shared (Gordon & Catalini, 2018).” Supposing that the key correlates with...