Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Informatics
Date Submitted: Jun 23, 2026
Date Accepted: Oct 19, 2026
Interoperability between health information systems: a dead end in large scale sharing of health data?
ABSTRACT
This article critically assesses some prevailing ideas around interoperability in the health domain. By looking at historical definitions of interoperability and related concepts, we find ambiguity and implicit assumptions. We sum them up in some commonly accepted “narratives of interoperability”. Having these clearly stated, they become available for analysis and can be assessed for the validity of the narratives as such. From this analysis, we derive some logical conclusions that, to our knowledge, have not been clearly stated before. Today’s idea of large-scale interoperability in health data might be an attractive concept that eventually proves impossible.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.