Interoperability in Hospitals: Improving Work Processes in Care and Treatment with Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and Clinical Data Repository

Although there is constant technological progress in the healthcare sector, a holistic view of the entire “patient journey” is still not possible in Germany. This can certainly be explained, on the one hand, by the fact that many different service providers, both from the outpatient and inpatient sectors, are involved in the treatment of a patient and that each of these service providers collects and documents data and information in their systems and applications. However, even a single service provider such as a hospital often lacks an overall view of the data relating to a patient and their use case. This can certainly limit the quality of medical treatment and nursing care, but may also have an impact on patient safety. For this reason, it is important to focus more on the topic of interoperability and how this can continuously improve healthcare on the basis of new standards such as Health Level Seven International Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (HL7 FHIR) and the use of interoperability platforms (IOPs). This chapter provides a general overview of current possibilities and the current state of development as well as ideas and thoughts on the general necessity and development of an interoperability platform as the basis for cross-departmental and cross-system data exchange and data sharing within a hospital.