New computing and communication technologies, medical advancements and changing provider-payer relationships are interacting to create an evolving healthcare ecosystem that can be both challenging and rewarding for innovative companies entering the market with healthcare products.

Computing and communication technologies have combined to create real time connections among patients, physicians and medical devices that enable sharing of healthcare data and healthcare knowledge that was never possible before. The challenge for a new healthcare product is to gain market acceptance by understanding how that product can leverage the existing/evolving ecosystem of healthcare products and processes and provide an innovative solution to a real-world problem within that ecosystem.

Knowing where and when to innovate in the healthcare ecosystem is an important as knowing what to innovate.  It is critical to understand how existing and new healthcare data and healthcare knowledge interoperability standards are eliminating some opportunities for innovation but enabling many new opportunities for innovative products that improve Clinical Efficiency and Clinical Efficacy.

Clinical Efficiency can be improved by leveraging Data Interoperability standards such as the HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard and the SMART on FHIR app framework to share a variety of types of patient data among healthcare organizations, physicians and patients themselves.

Clinical Efficacy can be improved by leveraging Knowledge Interoperability standards such as the HL7 Clinical Quality Language and the CDS Hooks framework to share new healthcare knowledge about the diagnosis of medical problems and the identification of effective treatment plans with physicians at the point of care.