Quick answer: Health system data and platform leaders no longer treat interoperability as a line item to confirm after signing a vendor contract. At our recent Xsolis IT Leadership Council, leaders from six major health systems named it as the lens they use to judge whether a vendor understands how their organization actually works.
Interoperability used to live in the IT requirements document. It was something to check during procurement, then forget about once the contract was signed. That’s no longer how I see health system leaders operate, and it’s not how the conversation unfolded at our last Xsolis IT Leadership Council, where data and platform leaders from Inova, Providence, Sarah Bush Lincoln, UT Medical Center, and Yale New Haven sat down together.
Across nearly every conversation at that table, one theme kept surfacing. Interoperability isn’t a background requirement anymore. It’s a lens these leaders use to judge whether a vendor actually understands how their organization works, before the vendor even gets the chance to prove it.
Three concerns came up again and again, and what struck me was how consistently clients described them in operational terms rather than IT language. They want less duplicate documentation. They want less switching between applications. And they want their data to flow back into the EMR and their broader reporting ecosystem instead of getting stuck in a separate tool.
None of these are new problems.
But the fact that data and platform leaders are raising them proactively, before a vendor even asks, tells me something important. Integration has stopped being a technical checkbox. It’s become a proxy for whether a vendor understands the operational reality of running a health system.
Take something as simple as moving from a patient’s chart into a specialized platform. If that requires a separate login, a new browser tab, and a mental context switch, it costs time. Multiply that across every case a clinician touches in a day, and the drag adds up fast. In-chart access that lets a user move directly from the EMR into the corresponding record in a specialized platform, without leaving their existing workflow, removes that friction entirely.
The same logic applies to documentation. When work completed in one platform doesn’t automatically flow into another, someone has to re-enter it. That’s wasted time, and it’s also a data integrity risk. Structured data that moves automatically between systems means completed work doesn’t need to be redone, and that work can power decisions and workflows well beyond the task it was originally created for.
It’s tempting to file all of this under IT efficiency and move on. But that undersells what’s actually happening. Yes, tighter integration reduces the burden on IT teams standing up and maintaining a connection between systems. That matters. But the bigger impact lands on the people using these systems every day.
Clinical and operational staff get time back when they’re not re-entering the same information twice or bouncing between five different applications to complete one task. And leadership gets something arguably more valuable: a complete, trustworthy picture that spans systems instead of living in fragments across them. When a reporting ecosystem actually reflects what’s happening across an organization, decisions get faster and more confident. That’s the real payoff, and it’s why data and platform leaders are elevating interoperability in how they evaluate vendors in the first place.
I want to be careful here, because it’s easy for a vendor to claim their integration works well. What’s harder, and more meaningful, is having that claim tested repeatedly by the organizations doing the evaluating. Xsolis’ Dragonfly Platform has been through more than 26 hospital and health system AI governance evaluations in the last 12 months. That volume of scrutiny matters. It means this isn’t a capability we’re describing on a slide. It’s a capability that’s been examined, questioned, and validated by the peers of the people reading this.
That distinction, between a vendor’s claim and a peer’s validation, is exactly what data and platform leaders should look for as they evaluate any AI platform touching their EMR. Ask not just whether integration exists, but how many other organizations like yours have already put it to the test.
Fair point, and it’s one I’d ask too. The term has been used loosely enough that it risks losing meaning. But the way to cut through that noise isn’t to take the claim at face value. It’s to ask specific questions. Does the integration require a separate login, or does it live inside the existing chart? Does completed work flow back automatically, or does someone have to re-enter it? Has the integration been evaluated by peer organizations, or is the only evidence a product demo? Those questions separate real interoperability from a marketing term.
Interoperability isn’t a differentiator you mention once during a sales conversation and then set aside. It’s an ongoing commitment, one that shows up in daily workflows, in how much duplicate work staff have to do, and in whether a leadership team can trust the data in front of them.
If you’re a data or platform leader evaluating your current stack, it’s worth asking a direct question: what is it costing your organization to not have this conversation? Duplicate documentation has a cost. Application switching has a cost. A reporting ecosystem that doesn’t reflect reality has a cost. Those costs compound quietly until someone decides to name them, the way the leaders at our Council did. The organizations that name them early are the ones that end up making better decisions, faster, with people who trust the data in front of them.
What does “interoperability” mean in the context of health system vendor evaluations? It refers to how cleanly a vendor’s platform connects with other systems of record, including in-chart access, bidirectional data flow, and whether completed work automatically updates records across systems instead of requiring manual re-entry.
Why are health system leaders prioritizing interoperability earlier in the vendor evaluation process? Leaders at health systems including Inova, Providence, Sarah Bush Lincoln, UT Medical Center, and Yale New Haven report that poor integration directly costs clinical staff time and introduces data integrity risk, making it a proxy for whether a vendor understands day-to-day operations.
How can a health system verify a vendor’s interoperability claims before signing a contract? Ask whether the integration requires a separate login or lives inside the existing chart, whether completed work flows back automatically, and how many peer organizations have evaluated the integration. Dragonfly has completed more than 26 hospital and health system AI governance evaluations in the past 12 months.
What’s the real cost of ignoring interoperability during procurement? Duplicate documentation, repeated application switching, and a reporting ecosystem that doesn’t reflect what’s actually happening across the organization. These costs accumulate quietly and compound over time.
Who should be involved in evaluating a vendor’s interoperability? Data and platform leaders, not just IT staff. The operational impact extends to clinical teams completing documentation and leadership teams relying on reporting that spans systems.
About Mallika Edwards, Chief Product Officer at Xsolis: Mallika Edwards brings 30 years of product management experience in the ideation, creation and commercialization of new solutions. She has held various positions in healthcare IT and is passionate about driving product innovation that is aligned to business outcomes.