Abstract:
Focusing on people in healthcare delivery needs to be backed up by streamlined flow of health information at the point of care. Thus semantic coherence of health information now becomes a must rather than a mere option. Health IT is not delivering what is expected. We argue that this is in part due to the limitations in the communication between clinicians and IT professionals resulting from the inevitable “cultural” mismatch. This paper explores new opportunities and challenges from both business and technical perspectives in the wake of Medicine 2.0 and presents new directions in the domain of information architectures and software development. openEHR prescribes an innovative development methodology which we propose will serve as an effective means to tackle communication problems. It is envisaged that the road to success is paved by innovation and openness (in a broader sense including open standards, a cultural change and appropriate roles for open source paradigm).