As a result of multiple patient care disciplines, departments and locations, patient data currently resides in individual silos – many containing large amounts of data. Yet, the need to access this patient information and share it is increasing at a rate that far outpaces the capability to provide controlled and effective access.

Current industry trends do point toward a move for easier sharing of healthcare information, however. On a national scale in the U.S., the centerpiece of the government’s effort to bring the healthcare system into the 21st century is a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). On a regional level, Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs) and Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are providing patients as well as healthcare workers with new opportunities for sharing patient data and improving overall patient care.

Current provider trends also point toward an increased focus on moving toward a single view of patient data. An increase in cross-disciplinary approaches to health along with an increase in scrutiny on patient care outcomes, is feeding pressure to integrate patient data and make it available for clinical decision making.

Barriers to patient data integration are daunting. Technology needs to account for numerous applications and be capable of presenting large amounts of patient data as if it were a single record. Data must be made available by remote access, yet be secured and protected. These barriers are holding back the implementation of these systems.

With the CCOW standard, applications in a heterogeneous environment can be configured to provide a single sign-on solution, evolving from individual applications that are accessed by multiple passwords has been challenging. Even with CCOW, silos of patient data still exist resulting in the same lack of patient data to make healthcare decisions.

What healthcare workers and physicians really seek is the ability to search through the silos of data to provide a unified view of a patient’s healthcare history. Added capabilities such as the ability to graph lab results from multiple patient data sources over time as if from the same system further improve patient safety.

So while most hospitals have an electronic health records (EHR) system in place, or are planning on purchasing one, the ROI on implementation and maintenance is not ideal. A unified view solution – often in the form of a patient portal solution – can provide a quicker route to true EHR capabilities while preserving existing infrastructure investments and strategies.

A good white paper on this subject can be found here: Unified View – Moving Beyond Single Sign-On. In time, implementation of patient portals to achieve a unified view of patient data should drive down healthcare costs while improving patient care.