As far as I can tell, the EMR system my surgeons & doctors use is solely a hindrance to his workflow as compared to paper charts. I'm sure it's easier for the people/computers processing paperwork and billing on the backend, but for the doctors and nurses in the room all I've heard so far are complaints. From my observation, the UI/UX of the whole thing is terrible. I'm actually embarrassed by it as a member of the profession.
This makes a lot of sense. IHE profiles and CCDAs are suboptimal ways in 2015 to transfer data between HIEs and Epic/Cerner/Allscripts along with every other EHR vendor either sell them or need to connect with them. It would behoove them to embrace this support in the same way it behooved hospitals to embrace HL7v2 in 1990: it saves them alot of work and money.
Of course, this doesn't help the average patient or app developer. How users will interact with these APIs and whether or not hospitals will have a standard and easy way to open them up is still yet to be seen. I imagine there will still be some work involved there, but I'm optimistic for the future.