What is an interoperability fracture and how can ecosystems mitigate it?

• A. Breaks in data exchange due to incompatible systems; mitigated by shared standards, governance, and robust health information exchanges
• B. A legal conflict between vendors
• C. A type of imaging artifact
• D. A data storage error

Answer: (A)

Interoperability fracture occurs when different health IT systems can’t exchange data or interpret it consistently, so patient information doesn’t flow smoothly as care moves across settings. Ecosystems address this by using shared standards and vocabularies so data from one system can be understood by another; governance frameworks set the rules for who can share data, under what conditions, and how data quality and privacy are maintained; and robust health information exchanges provide the secure infrastructure to move and translate data between organizations. The other options describe separate issues—legal conflicts between vendors, imaging artifacts, or storage errors—that don’t capture the ongoing challenge of incompatible data exchange across systems.