The foundational concept of interoperability never fails to both confound and inspire developers, technologists and providers alike in the quest to deliver high-quality, cost-effective care.

“As a key industry trend it’s not going away,” Joe DeSantis, vice president of HealthShare for InterSystems.

InterSystems is taking a different road to connected care and patient engagement than EHR-to-EHR interoperability: informatics.

The connectivity and data management vendor, in fact, is working “to leverage the IT infrastructure as a platform for incremental innovation,” in the coming months, DeSantis said.

Indeed, interoperability has been a driving force for the company’s latest developments, particularly its HealthShare informatics platform, which DeSantis described as an enabler for “innovation in patient-centric care.”

“Interoperability must be understood at the informatics platform level — at the very heart of the IT infrastructure — to achieve the promise of connected care,” he said.

Recent examples show organizations rising to this challenge: The CurrentCare health information exchange in Rhode Island has reduced 30-day hospital readmissions by nearly 16 percent for patients whose primary care physicians participated in the HIE and received hospital alerts. And North Shore-LIJ, a large health system in New York, has leveraged its informatics platform to deliver innovations in care coordination for high-risk maternity patients.

Such initiatives demonstrate the promise of connected care. “That’s one thing that will never change,” DeSantis said. “It will continue to be our focus in the months ahead.” 

Exactly what InterSystems intends to show off at HIMSS15, well, DeSantis wouldn’t reveal that just yet.