EMR Integration – "Ice Cream, Anyone?"

Do you stand in front of a Baskin Robbins ice cream case trying to figure out which flavor of ice cream to choose? Are there so many flavors that it takes more time to choose your flavor then to eat it? Where am I going with this ice cream questioning, you ask, when you were hoping to hear about EMR integration? Well with all of the different Electronic Medical Records systems available on the market today – over 100 of them and counting – it is apparent that there are as many flavors of EMR systems and EMR integration points as there are flavors of Baskin Robbins ice cream. Additionally, there are as many standards to connect applications, HL7, HL7 Clinical Document Architecture, Continuity of Care Record, EHR-Lab Interoperability, and Connectivity Specification, to name a few, as there are toppings. And finally there are various different ways to serve up integration ice cream – firm, like in a cone, or flexible, like in a paper cup. So like picking an ice cream from the Baskin Robbins case, how does one know the right flavor of integration to choose when dealing with disparate healthcare systems?