One way to view Intelligent Healthcare is to consider it a Federated Governance framework. By that we mean that IH can exhibit or consist of community-driven governance with specific guidelines or principles which could be applied to specific initiatives within the ecosystem of communities. Governance is a sometimes subjective concept, but in the context of IT management it generally refers to the ability to track and manage a complex portfolio of capabilities or systems. The traditional view of governance tends to view the world in strict “reporting chains,” wherein responsibilities are neatly mapped to specific organizations or individuals. However, federated and cross-domain environments or scenarios do not fit well into that traditional perspective of Governance.

Governance is now a mutually beneficial and mutually coordinated mandate, built more around consensus and concurrence than strict reporting responsibility. No one organization can solve everyone else’s problems but what they can do is operate in a collaborative ecosystem that jointly addresses shared problems, challenges and solution initiatives. The primary mechanism that unites stakeholder communities and coordinates action is shared access to pertinent knowledge. The secondary  mechanism which enables Intelligent Healthcare is a collaborative Policy definition and management paradigm. This is different than either standards development or adherence paradigms – it is rather the shared logical definition of shared goals and expectations.