With so much health information still not interoperable, is it any surprise that there's bound to be a lot of duplicated data? A report from IDC says patients often get the same information on their health and wellness from insurance companies and from hospitals.

"The insurance companies, hospitals and physicians, particularly the very large provider organizations in the U.S. like the Mayo Clinic, are building the same sorts of capabilities and they are planning if not executing the same kind of alerts and information to consumers," IDC analyst Janice Young says, InformationWeek reports. And the duplication often leads to unnecessary expenditures on IT and technical support, often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per institution, according to Young.

The solution, says Young, is for payers and providers to "align and integrate [IT] efforts to produce the best long term market results." We wish them good luck.

For further information:
- check out this InformationWeek story

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