The global phenomenon that is XBRL in financial reporting has at times dominated, if not monopolized, the discussions of XBRL’s potential to improve transparency and interoperability in any industry for financial and performance purposes. To that end, probably no other industry is in the midst of a financial and performance revolution like healthcare.

While “Healthcare reform” has been a white-hot topic in the US for the last 2 years, the revolution began before that, and has affected every country in the world. Industrialized nations as a whole have recognized several critical trends in global health:

  • The explosion of Information Technology and its impact on healthcare delivery, especially mobile technology
  • The spiraling costs of delivering an episode of care, in all countries, and the limits of Entitlement and National Insurance programs to support them.
  • The changes in the quality and availability of healthcare, and in global demographics that affect that availability.

The Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has been actively involved in the revolution in health technology, and joined forces with the Medical Banking Institute (MBI) after recognizing the significant relationship between global finance and global health delivery. The MB Tech Integration Task Force is an initiative to research and analyze "the latent integration of banking technology, infrastructure and credit with healthcare administrative operations" and define the need and technical avenues of the integration of data represented in our concept of a “Medical Banking Information Supply Chain”. Leveraging the definition of this supply chain such that may be represented in XBRL, is intended to facilitate interoperability in a way that is open, flexible and international in scope.

The benefits may include dramatic reductions in development of proprietary applications and interchange standards for software vendor, industry groups, and government agencies alike. Also, everyone will benefit from increased services from care providers and financial institutions due to more flexible interchange formats and reduced development efforts. Lastly, care providers, governments, NGOs, relief agencies, financial institutions and other system developers will enjoy reduced development costs and schedules when integrating their systems with analysis, reporting and compliance systems.

by James St.Clair