Colombia Advances Towards the Era of RDA and Health Interoperability

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Colombia is entering a new phase of digital maturity in its healthcare sector. It is moving away from merely consolidating administrative data via Individual Records of Service Provision (RIPS) towards a model centered on the exchange of clinical knowledge, enabled by the Interoperability of the Electronic Health Record (IHCE) and the Digital Summary of Care (RDA). With over 5.6 billion health services reported in Colombia between 2009 and 2025 (according to SISPRO), the country has established one of Latin America's largest healthcare information ecosystems. Against this backdrop, the IHCE strategy, driven by the Ministry of Health, aims to ensure the secure and standardized exchange of clinical information. The RDA serves as a foundation that gathers the minimum necessary set of clinical data to share information among authorized system actors. This represents a shift from merely exchanging documents to exchanging 'clinical knowledge.' While RIPS records *what* services were provided, the RDA captures and shares the *clinical context* of each encounter using standards like HL7 FHIR. This evolution requires hospitals and clinics to transition towards interoperable platforms that integrate information from multiple systems. Ultimately, this foundation enables advanced analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities, aiming to strengthen clinical decision-making and population health management.