Healthcare IT Moves Beyond Interoperability Toward A Human-Centered 'Harmony' Model

Healthcare IT spent years chasing interoperability, and in many ways, it won. Standards like TEFCA made it possible for systems to talk to each other at scale. But once the pipes were connected, a harder truth emerged: data flow alone doesn't ease clinician burnout or improve the lived experience of care. Now, progress hinges less on whether systems can exchange information and more on whether that connection actually helps the people using it.

Enter Stephanie Hines, the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Valleywise Health. A seasoned executive with leadership experience at major health systems like Intermountain Health and Atrium Health, Hines is also a Registered Nurse and a Certified Healthcare CIO. But Hines isn't your typical CIO. She didn't start as a nurse who learned IT; she was a programmer and architect who made a mid-career pivot to become a nurse. Her unusual journey gives her a rare bilingual command of both worlds, bridging the credibility gap that often separates clinical and technical teams. She’s championing a move beyond interoperability to something she calls "harmony."

"Interoperability is about connecting systems. Harmony is about the collective experience of the people using them, and whether that experience is actually meaningful," said Hines. That distinction reframes the entire goal of healthcare technology. When systems create friction, clinicians become so "cognitively burdened with complex systems that don't work well together" that they can’t focus on their patients. This friction gets in the way of the clinician-patient relationship because people are no longer connecting to the purpose that brought them into healthcare in the first place. The future, she believes, lies in designing a collective experience where technology actively supports the people who use it.

• The engagement dividend: But a human-centric focus challenges traditional productivity metrics. Hines advised leaders to adopt a more holistic, long-term view of ROI that accounts for the real, often unmeasured, costs of burnout such as lost productivity from open positions and the expense of recruiting providers. The business case for harmony, she said, is found in the upside of engagement. "When systems stop getting in the way and everything clicks, people work differently. They’re more focused, more confident in what they’re contributing, and better positioned to succeed. That energy translates directly into better care and more sustainable performance."

• Leadership on foot: To achieve this, Hines pointed to a leadership strategy that uses proximity to build a foundation of trust. She is formalizing this with quarterly strategy sessions to discuss pain points and goals, but insisted that the true work of change management happens through "old-fashioned relationships." It’s this trust, built on an understanding of clinical reality, that forges deeper alignment and buy-in. "You can't sit in an office. You have to be out and about. You have to be on the units," she insisted. "You have to hear the voice of the customer that you are serving, understand it, and be able to share that back."

Her philosophy informs a disciplined investment filter designed to foster meaningful innovation. Any new technology must solve an agreed-upon problem. For IT professionals who love a "Rubik's cube," the temptation to chase intricate technology for its own sake is real, a practice she advised leaders to avoid.

• Resisting the Rubik's Cube: "If it doesn't tie to a problem your organization is experiencing, then you just become a solution looking for a problem. You're adding cost, you're adding to your stack, you're adding complexity to the workflow, and you're not really going to see value," Hines explained. For innovations that do pass this filter, she champions a "fail fast" approach, using low-budget pilots to test hypotheses as quickly as possible and make sure they can scale before committing major resources.

• Keep it simple: "How stacks sprawl is rarely strategic," Hines said. "A physician insists on a tool, it gets bought. Something’s been around forever, so it keeps getting renewed. Over time, no one questions whether any of it still makes sense." Her counter is a platform-first mindset. "Simplify. If you’re on Epic, commit to Epic," she said. "An integrated platform is easier to maintain, reduces noise, and creates a more harmonious experience because it’s designed to work as a whole."

Only after simplifying the technical environment can leaders move to the second step: engaging with users to find and fix the friction. Engaging with users, she noted, relies on multi-directional communication—down to staff, horizontally to stakeholders, and up to the board. By having conversations about pain points for clinicians and patients alike, CIOs can then learn from the industry, partner with vendors, or innovate in-house to close the remaining gaps.

In her view, harmonious IT isn't a replacement for interoperability, but its strategic maturation. It elevates the conversation beyond a technology-centric goal of connecting systems, framing the challenge as a leadership-led priority to make sure those connections actively support engagement and preserve the human-to-human purpose at the heart of healthcare. She framed it as a continuous cycle: simplify the tech stack, engage with users to find their pain points, and innovate to create an environment where both clinicians and patients can thrive.