Interoperability is the ability of diverse systems and users across a variety of organizations to work together.  It gives people and organizations the ability to communicate and meaningfully exchange clinical and administrative information across systems in such a way that the meaning of the information is preserved.

Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are platforms through which interoperability can be achieved in healthcare.  These solutions are the means by which digital information is exchanged across organizations and providers within a region, community, or other integrated care delivery network.  A key goal of an HIE is to facilitate access to and retrieval of clinical data in order to provide safer, more timely, more efficient, and more effective patient-centered care when and where it is needed.

There are many core elements in an HIE.  These include Master Patient Indexes (MPIs) which link data from different origins to a common identifier so information can be organized on a patient-centric basis.   Data repositories that hold clinical and administrative data.  Mechanisms for sharing / exchanging data into and out of the HIE (e.g., interface engines, web services, and other data import/export tools).  Tracking and audit tools to monitor the movement of data and access to data.

Once these fundamental elements are in place, other functionality can be added that transform the HIEs to original data creators, not just simply exchanges.  One example of this type of functionality is an alert of notification that the HIE generates based on certain event criteria.

Additionally, as the data stored in the HIE becomes robust, analytics can mine the data for population health, to assess adherence to quality contracts, and measure ACO success.  Some HIEs provide analytics modules, but others provide extraction capabilities to allow for external data manipulation.