Achieving Electronic Connectivity in Health Care: Summary of Recommendations: Technical Panel

In order to provide a majority of their benefits, clinical applications must interconnect with other clinical systems. The potential to avoid medical errors and drug interactions, to deliver real-time prompts and reminders at the point of care and directly to the patient or caregiver, and to improve the ability to conduct clinical research depend on a highly connected network of regional healthcare communities that exchange data between effectively used clinical systems such as EHRs.