Interoperability

Your car is interoperable with the road. Will it take you where you want to go, though? If you answered "yes", well.... So we hear about "interoperability" a lot these days. The government is looking into NHIN to be an "interoperable" platform, your applications should be interoperable with others etc. etc. Well my friends, we are missing the point. To me, there are two different types of "interoperability". Before you jump down my throat, let me explain. There is the "business" of interoperability and then there is the "technology" of interoperability. As the informatics visionary of your organization, what do you need to focus on first? You guessed it...the "business" first before the technology.

The Business of interoperability
What does that mean? Well, it is simple. If you want to connect physicians, patients and everyone else in between, there is one thing that is important. "Information". Simply put, "information sharing" is the business. Trust me, your patients could care less how Facebook like your application looks if there is no information there. So, step one would be to nail down the information that you are going to share using your shiny new "Facebooky" (remind me to send that term to Oxford for inclusion in the next revision of their dictionary) application.

The Technology
The technology of information sharing focuses more on "how" the information gets delivered. There are people working to solve this "issue" already. To me, that is like putting the cart before the horse. Decide "what" you want to share, "who" you want to share it with and then decide on "how" you are going to share it. Minimally, your investment in technology (after the "what" and "who" are decided), should focus on a couple of simple things.
a) Can the new system "talk" to your existing systems?
b) Can it share the information it gathers from other systems with others? (will it play well with others? Is it a team player?)
If the answer to both those are yes, then you have an "interoperable" system.

To summarize, if your car needs to go where you want to go, first you need to know "where" you are going and then you need to drive it to your destination.