How the 21st Century Cures Act Helps Pave the Way to Increased Interoperability

The passage of the 21^st Century Cures Act, and more recently the implementation of the Final Rule of the Act this past April, was a big win for the healthcare IT ecosystem. As investors in the space, one of the biggest challenges has been finding companies that are effectively leveraging the vast amounts of digital health data while not being overly reliant on specific vendors that could suddenly turn off their data supply or increase prices.

Since the movement towards digitization of health records and EHRs as systems of record over a decade ago, non system of record healthcare IT businesses looking to build upon EHR data have had to hope their partnerships were strong enough to facilitate a continued robust exchange of information. With the Final Rule of the 21^st Century Cures Act, which prevents information blocking practices by mandating that healthcare IT vendors like EHRs share necessary clinical data that enables new business models of care, vendors gain greater certainty that their data providers will remain open and, thus, are more willing to build products reliant on third-party data.  

You may have seen we recently invested in Qure4u, a complete digital health and virtual care platform that integrates with health systems’ existing EHRs, providing everything from digital check in and patient scheduling to telehealth and remote patient monitoring. Qure4u’s robust connectivity to its EHR partners is possible due to this increased trend towards interoperability and is key to its value prop of improving health systems’ administrative and clinical workflows.