Interoperability as a Property of Ubiquitous Healthcare Systems

Abstract

As healthcare becomes omnipresent, the contemporary paradigm of systems interoperability turns out to be incomplete and insufficient in attempt to address the complex interrelationships of diversified technical environment in which the clinical processes occur. While the traditional view of the healthcare systems architecture considered only clinical information systems and healthcare facilities, as the future Internet-of-Things becomes a reality, mobile devices, sensors, tags and other identifiable resources with communication and processing capability need to be taken in the picture. In such complex circumstances, the perception of interoperability needs to evolve from the consideration of interoperating pairs of systems to the capability of an autonomous system to sense, interpret, understand and act upon arbitrary messages received from a potentially unknown sender. In this sense, interoperability becomes in fact a property of the system. In this paper, we elaborate on an evolved concept of interoperability in context of ubiquitous healthcare systems. Then, we identify the enabling factors for the interoperable systems involved in pervasive healthcare and assess the impact the Interoperability as a Property (IaaP) paradigm would have on the healthcare landscape and challenges.