SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Health Serv.
Sec. Patient Centered Health Systems
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frhs.2025.1600689
This article is part of the Research TopicPushing Boundaries in EHR Implementation and Innovation through Advanced Digital Health TechnologiesView all articles
Challenges and Strategies in Building a Foundational Digital Health Data Integration Ecosystem: A Systematic Review and Thematic Synthesis
Provisionally accepted
- The Self Research Institute, Broken Arrow, United States
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Chronic conditions require robust healthcare data integration to support personalized care, real-time decision-making, and secure information exchange. However, fragmented data ecosystems disrupt interoperability, complicate patient-centered care (PCC), and present challenges for incorporating genomic data into clinical workflows.This systematic review with thematic synthesis aims to identify key challenges and synthesize existing strategies from the literature to inform the development of a foundational digital health data integration ecosystem.Following PRISMA guidelines, we systematically screened literature across multiple databases. A thematic synthesis approach was used to categorize findings into three primary themes: interoperability, PCC, and genomic data integration.A total of 161 studies were included. Key challenges identified include semantic misalignment across commonly used healthcare standards such as HL7 FHIR and SNOMED CT, limited cross-system data exchange, inadequate patient engagement features in EHRs, and concerns regarding the security and clinical utility of genomic data. Strategies described across the literature include ontology-based interoperability models, AI-supported PCC frameworks, and blockchain-enabled genomic data governance.By analyzing current methodologies, research gaps, and implementation challenges, this review offers an evidence-based foundation to guide future advancements in healthcare data integration. It supports the development of scalable, privacy-preserving, and ethically governed data-sharing infrastructures that enable personalized medicine and real-time clinical interventions.
Keywords: Patient-Centered Care, Healthcare data integration, Systematic review, interoperability, genomic data, thematic synthesis, Digital health ecosystem
Received: 26 Mar 2025; Accepted: 09 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ambalavanan, Snead, Marczika, Towett, Malioukis and Mbogori-Kairichi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Radha Ambalavanan, The Self Research Institute, Broken Arrow, United States
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