For decades, healthcare has invested in breakthrough technologies — from artificial intelligence to genomics to robotics — with the promise of delivering safer, smarter, more personalized care. Yet the most important IT problem remains unsolved.

Health system leaders need true interoperability to move forward. Without seamless, secure, real-time data exchange, hospitals and health systems cannot fully leverage the tools they are rapidly adopting.

“The technology that must advance the quickest is the ecosystem that enables true interoperability of health data, from standards like FHIR to secure APIs and cloud platforms,” said Biju Samkutty, COO of international and enterprise automation at Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic. “Ulocking it will transform care by giving clinicians and patients a complete, real-time view of health, fueling breakthroughs in AI, precision medicine and global collaboration.”

Mayo Clinic is on the forefront of leveraging technology to improve healthcare through platform initiatives and data-sharing frameworks that have forged global partnerships to securely connect providers and patients. They are “setting the stage for a more connected and intelligent future of care,” Mr. Samkutty said.

Healthcare won’t be able to truly transform with artificial intelligence, robotics or genomics until interoperability of data systems is complete. The current system is “plagued by fragmentation” with patient information scattered across EHRs, imaging platforms, lab systems and databases, said Rahul Kashyap, MD, medical director of research for WellSpan Health in York, Pa., and an assistant professor at Mayo Clinic. The disparate system leads to critical delays in care and results in duplicate tests and other inefficiencies with avoidable costs; it also leads to worse care.

“Interoperability is not just about convenience. It is the backbone of every other technological advancement in healthcare,” said Dr. Kashyap. “Artificial intelligence models, for example, require robust, representative and comprehensive datasets to generate reliable predictions. Precision medicine depends on the integration of genomic, clinical and lifestyle data at scale. Population health initiatives need connected systems to track trends, identify gaps in care and inform public health responses. Without interoperable infrastructure, these innovations remain isolated and proofs of concept rather than scalable solutions.”

Rachel Hernandez, lead director of operations at Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center, sees the significant consequences daily from the lack of interoperability.

“Patients are forced to repeat their medical history at every new encounter, clinicians are left to make critical decisions without access to complete records and duplicate testing and imaging wastes both time and money,” she said. “In urgent or emergent scenarios, the stakes rise even higher. Seconds matter when treating a trauma or heart attack and yet emergency physicians often do not have immediate access to essential details like allergies, current medications or recent lab results because prior records remain locked behind incompatible systems.”

The economic consequences are stark as well.

“The United States alone loses tens of billions of dollars each year in inefficiencies tied to poor data sharing – avoidable admissions, unnecessary tests redundant imaging and administrative waste,” said Ms. Hernandez. “The costs weigh heavily on health systems already operating on thin margins, and they siphon resources away from innovations that could genuinely improve care.”

Going forward, the hidden costs of poor interoperability will become more evident. The difference between hospitals with the strongest and weakest margins is often tied to digital transformation. Those that embrace technology and make key investments early on have more success while those who can’t afford technology are left behind. Hospitals need the ability to collect data and then convert it into meaningful insights.

“We swim in oceans of data in healthcare, but to the average consumer of healthcare services, the movement of data is stuck in the 1990s. Who would have guessed that every conference in health IT the last two years is obsessed with AI, LLMs, and the like but the speakers are representing organizations that still use papers, fax machines and DVDs?” said Nate Gladwell, RN, executive director of network development and digital health at the University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City. “The pace of the data interoperability evolution has been on par with the promise of nuclear fusion. We heard the concept decades ago, we hear about it every few years, and yet we fail to see meaningful change in the real world. Information flow is the most vital element of complex systems.”

Even if hospitals integrate artificial intelligence, remote patient monitoring and telehealth transform healthcare delivery, hospitals with poor interoperability won’t be able to take advantage of their benefits.

“No AI tool, no matter how sophisticated, can generate reliable insights if it must work with partial inputs,” said Ms. Hernandez. “No telehealth service can deliver fully coordinated care if data from remote monitoring devices never reaches the patient’s broader record. No value-based care program can fairly reward outcomes if it is blind to half the patient journey. Improving interoperability quickly is the essential step that will allow every other innovation to be integrated seamlessly into a connected ecosystem capable of delivering on the full promise of modern medicine.”

Achieving stronger interoperability is easier said than done. It’s a technical, cultural, political and economic issue too complicated for health systems to solve on their own.

“Vendors, institutions and regulators must collaborate to prioritize standards, data-sharing agreements and patient-centered design,” said Dr. Kashyap. “Trust, transparency and security are critical to ensure that data flows without compromising privacy. In the end, the promise of futuristic healthcare technologies will only be realized if we address this foundational issue.”

Interoperability extends beyond clinical episodes of care to touch revenue cycle management and claims processing. The healthcare system needs a safe and secure way for providers to easily transfer information to insurance companies for payment, and automate approvals (or catch issues before unclean claims go out). Providers are “drowning in denied claims, billing errors and revenue cycle chaos that wastes time and drains focus from care” when systems can’t talk to one another, said Michelle Myers, senior director of revenue cycle management at Boulder Care in Portland, Ore.

“Interoperability is not glamorous, but it is the single most urgent technology that needs to improve, because it is the key that unlocks everything else,” said Dr. Kashyap.

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