What operational hurdle represented a greater shift than the initial concept of digital prescription transmission?
The creation of interoperable networks connecting disparate systems
While the technological capability to send a prescription digitally existed in prototype form relatively early on, the actual barrier to widespread operational success was not the concept itself but the necessary infrastructure required for industry reliance. The real operational 'invention' involved overcoming the limitation of siloed systems, where a doctor's software could only communicate with one pharmacy chain using identical proprietary software. The significant hurdle overcome was establishing interoperable networks. These networks, often facilitated by intermediary services like Surescripts in the US, allowed thousands of different EHR systems to communicate seamlessly and securely with hundreds of different pharmacy systems across state lines, ensuring standardization, completeness, and legality of incoming data.
