What was the primary effect of the HITECH Act of 2009 on interoperability efforts?

It spurred the adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), setting the stage for data sharing demand

The HITECH Act of 2009 played a crucial foundational role in the later push for interoperability, though it did not directly mandate data exchange standards in the way subsequent legislation did. Its primary legislative function was to incentivize and accelerate the widespread adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) across various healthcare settings throughout the United States. By ensuring that patient data was digitized and housed within these new EHR systems, the Act created the necessary prerequisite for interoperability; once systems contained digital data, the subsequent need and demand for those systems to communicate and share that newly captured information became apparent and necessary, paving the way for later interoperability mandates.