Why healthcare interoperability is no longer just about moving messages
Healthcare has made real progress on clinical data exchange. Most hospitals can connect systems and share information with external partners. But connectivity hasn't solved the fundamental problem. According to 2023 ONC data, 70% of non-federal acute care hospitals exchanged data at least sometimes, yet only 42% integrated external data into care processes. The gap between moving data and making it usable is where most organizations are stuck, and it's growing as demands from analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), prior authorization automation, and coordinated care intensify.
This is the challenge that traditional integration engines alone can't solve. It's also why Infor Cloverleaf™ was built from the start as a healthcare interoperability platform.
Black Book Research now calls the category Healthcare Integration & Operational Data Engineering Platforms. Its 18-key performance indicator (KPI) framework scores vendors on healthcare data governance, workflow orchestration, AI readiness, and operational observability alongside traditional interoperability capabilities.
The industry's most respected independent benchmark is now measuring what we've been building toward: interoperability as a strategic platform, not just a connectivity function.
Infor™ ranked #1 in both the provider and payer segments, the only vendor to lead both scorecards. That matters because a health system ensuring procedure readiness faces fundamentally different interoperability challenges than a payer modernizing prior authorization workflows.
Read the full Black Book report here.
A patient shows up for surgery with information coming in from multiple outside sources. The integration engine has done its job. Records were exchanged, Health Level Seven (HL7) Version 2 (V2) messages were routed, and point-to-point connections worked as expected. On paper, the data moved successfully.
But what reaches the care team is often fragmented. Medication lists don’t match. Allergy information appears in conflicting versions. Critical details are buried in unstructured documents or mapped to codes that don’t translate. Clinicians end up stopping to verify, reconcile, and sometimes repeat tests or delay decisions—not because data is missing, but because it isn’t usable at the moment.
A platform changes that equation. Instead of simply passing data through, it standardizes information using clinical terminologies like Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC), and RxNorm (a standardized clinical drug nomenclature), so it carries the same meaning everywhere it appears. It layers in governance, so clinicians and operations leaders can trust what they’re seeing. It also makes that data accessible through Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) application programming interfaces (APIs), so applications and partners can consume it without custom builds.
The same pattern plays out beyond the operating room (OR). When a discharge summary is normalized, exposed through FHIR APIs, and used to trigger follow-up scheduling and medication reconciliation, it becomes part of a coordinated care process rather than just another static record.
That is the shift. Organizations trying to support analytics, enable AI, automate prior authorization, and coordinate care across complex environments don’t just need data that has been exchanged. They need data that is usable, trustworthy, and ready to drive action.
This is what a healthcare interoperability platform delivers, and it's what Infor Cloverleaf has always been. The integration engine is just one component within a larger architecture. The engine handles legacy messaging. The platform ensures data is normalized, enriched, governed, and ready for advanced use cases, including population health, real-time care coordination, analytics, and AI.
As healthcare organizations invest in what comes next, that platform foundation will only become more critical.
To learn how Infor Cloverleaf can support where your organization is headed, read the full white paper here.
This is the challenge that traditional integration engines alone can't solve. It's also why Infor Cloverleaf™ was built from the start as a healthcare interoperability platform.
What eight consecutive Black Book awards signal about the market
Infor Cloverleaf has been recognized as the #1 healthcare interoperability solution by Black Book Research for the eighth consecutive year. But what matters most about the 2026 recognition is how the evaluation itself has changed.Black Book Research now calls the category Healthcare Integration & Operational Data Engineering Platforms. Its 18-key performance indicator (KPI) framework scores vendors on healthcare data governance, workflow orchestration, AI readiness, and operational observability alongside traditional interoperability capabilities.
The industry's most respected independent benchmark is now measuring what we've been building toward: interoperability as a strategic platform, not just a connectivity function.
Infor™ ranked #1 in both the provider and payer segments, the only vendor to lead both scorecards. That matters because a health system ensuring procedure readiness faces fundamentally different interoperability challenges than a payer modernizing prior authorization workflows.
Read the full Black Book report here.
Why an integration engine isn’t enough anymore
The shift Black Book Research is tracking isn’t just an industry trend. As a clinician for over 25 years, I saw this firsthand. Data arrived, but it rarely arrived ready. For example, consider a perioperative scenario.A patient shows up for surgery with information coming in from multiple outside sources. The integration engine has done its job. Records were exchanged, Health Level Seven (HL7) Version 2 (V2) messages were routed, and point-to-point connections worked as expected. On paper, the data moved successfully.
But what reaches the care team is often fragmented. Medication lists don’t match. Allergy information appears in conflicting versions. Critical details are buried in unstructured documents or mapped to codes that don’t translate. Clinicians end up stopping to verify, reconcile, and sometimes repeat tests or delay decisions—not because data is missing, but because it isn’t usable at the moment.
A platform changes that equation. Instead of simply passing data through, it standardizes information using clinical terminologies like Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC), and RxNorm (a standardized clinical drug nomenclature), so it carries the same meaning everywhere it appears. It layers in governance, so clinicians and operations leaders can trust what they’re seeing. It also makes that data accessible through Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) application programming interfaces (APIs), so applications and partners can consume it without custom builds.
The same pattern plays out beyond the operating room (OR). When a discharge summary is normalized, exposed through FHIR APIs, and used to trigger follow-up scheduling and medication reconciliation, it becomes part of a coordinated care process rather than just another static record.
That is the shift. Organizations trying to support analytics, enable AI, automate prior authorization, and coordinate care across complex environments don’t just need data that has been exchanged. They need data that is usable, trustworthy, and ready to drive action.
This is what a healthcare interoperability platform delivers, and it's what Infor Cloverleaf has always been. The integration engine is just one component within a larger architecture. The engine handles legacy messaging. The platform ensures data is normalized, enriched, governed, and ready for advanced use cases, including population health, real-time care coordination, analytics, and AI.
As healthcare organizations invest in what comes next, that platform foundation will only become more critical.
To learn how Infor Cloverleaf can support where your organization is headed, read the full white paper here.
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