Converge or Collide? Making Sense of a Plethora of Open Data Standards in Health Care

Practitioners of digital health are familiar with disjointed data environments that often inhibit effective communication among different elements of the ecosystem. This fragmentation leads in turn to issues such as inconsistencies in services versus payments, wastage, and notably, care delivered being less than best-practice. Despite the long-standing recognition of interoperable data as a potential solution, efforts in achieving interoperability have been disjointed and inconsistent, resulting in numerous incompatible standards, despite the widespread agreement that fewer standards would enhance interoperability. This paper introduces a framework for understanding health care data needs, discussing the challenges and opportunities of open data standards in the field. It emphasizes the necessity of acknowledging diverse data standards, each catering to specific viewpoints and needs, while proposing a categorization of health care data into three domains, each with its distinct characteristics and challenges, along with outlining overarching design requirements applicable to all domains and specific requirements unique to each domain.