5 key takeaways from the HIMSS State of Interoperability and Connected Care report

HIMSS Market Insights annually surveys clinicians and healthcare leaders across the U.S. to understand their current obstacles and progress in advancing their interoperability goals.

The latest results from the State of Interoperability and Connected Care report show that the top goals of healthcare leaders often are at odds with their current reality.

Nearly 60% of the clinicians and healthcare professionals surveyed by HIMSS Market Insights said that improving patient outcomes was their top priority. Yet, half of the respondents believe their organization isn’t very effective at meeting its top goals.

Here are five key takeaways from the HIMSS report.

Integrating data from outside providers is a huge challenge

When asked for their organization’s most significant obstacle to improving interoperability and delivering a more connected care experience, 42% cited integrating data from multiple electronic health record (EHR) systems. Integrating new solutions into existing workflows was a close second, at 41%, followed by managing unstructured data and content (39%).

Larger organizations — systems with 500-plus hospital beds — are almost twice as likely to face challenges when integrating data from multiple EHR systems (50%, compared to 26% of small to midsized organizations). Larger organizations are also almost twice as likely to face obstacles when integrating new solutions with existing systems (49%, compared to 26% of small to midsized health systems).

> Learn more | Explore Hyland’s integrations

Unstructured documents and images remain a significant concern

Only 31% of the respondents said at least half of their unstructured documents and medical images are available at the point of care. That figure is down from 40% in 2024.

Barely half of the organizations surveyed by HIMSS — 51% — have at least 40% of their data available at the point of care. And 35% have less than 30% of their unstructured data available.

Also concerning: Less than a third of the organizations’ unstructured patient data that resides outside of core health IT apps is accessible and available for analysis 40% or more of the time.

Asked when they anticipated purchasing a connected care platform to deliver unstructured enterprise content, images and video for access within EHR workflows, 44% said within two years. That was down from 49% in 2024, but ahead of the 41% of respondents who said the same in 2023.

> Learn more | How connected data can help improve patient outcomes

The rising importance of digital collaboration tools

Asked what steps their organization is taking or likely to take to improve interoperability and deliver a more connected care experience, 85% cited digital collaboration tools. Nearly a third of the organizations (28%) said they are investigating the use of collaboration tools, while 34% said they are planning to use such tools and 23% are currently using or piloting the use of the tools.

There is also a growing number of organizations that are looking to exchange data with key stakeholders outside their health system (31% are planning to, and 20% said they are investigating the option). The share of health systems that are exploring the development of standardized methods of identifying patients (30% investigating and 26% planning) is also increasing.

Larger organizations are significantly more likely to be using or piloting the integration of point-of-care images and workflows (45%, compared to just 18% of small to midsized health systems). There were also significant gaps between large and small/midsized organizations when it comes to leveraging natural language processing solutions (34% vs. 13%), robotic process automation (34% vs. 5%) and automating the classification of unstructured data (20% vs. 5%).

> Watch the webinar | Strategies for improving connected care

Health systems are finding common use cases for AI

Health systems said they plan to utilize AI at some point for appointment scheduling (57%), personalized treatment plans (56%), image reconstruction (55%), and billing and coding (55%).

Within the next two years, the top priorities for AI are appointment scheduling (44%), remote monitoring (39%), case management (39%) and personalized treatment plans (38%).

Among the current uses of AI, billing and coding (27%) leads the way, followed by medical records management (26%), natural language processing (25%), appointment scheduling (24%), and chatbots and virtual assistants (24%).

However, more than a third of the respondents said they have no plans to leverage AI for drug discovery (38%) and clinical trials (35%).

> Get the infographic | Key insights and top challenges from HIMSS

Maximizing the value of EHR investments is as important as ever

The top priorities of health leaders remained the same: improving patient outcomes (59%) and optimizing clinical workflows and performance (47%).

Maximizing the value of EHR investments tied improving patient satisfaction and meeting regulatory compliance requirements for third at 37%. But the latter two each topped 40% in the 2024 HIMSS survey. In contrast, the 37% figure for maximizing the value of EHR investments was up sharply from 2024 (28%, ninth) and 2023 (12th, 22%).

The increasing importance of getting the most out of tech investments was reflected in another survey question. Asked which results they’ve noticed from utilizing efficient technologies to improve interoperability, 77% said operational efficiency. That was way up from 56% in 2023 and 65% in 2024.

The ability to receive data from another organization in real time was second at 60% — up from 42% in 2024.

> Learn more | The enterprise-wide value of Hyland Healthcare

Interoperability challenges? We can help

Does your healthcare organization lack complete access to medical images, clinical notes and other data? Hyland can help your organization tackle interoperability challenges.

With our content intelligence and enterprise imaging solutions, health systems can:

• Integrate medical images and unstructured clinical content within EHR workflows

• Unlock patient records that reside outside the EHR

• Make a real difference with real-time collaboration

• Unlock intelligent imaging workflows to meet growing demands

• Maximize your investment by improving efficiency, reducing costs and enhancing outcomes

Ready to learn more? Request a demo or schedule a meeting today.