For providers to make good on the promise of value-based care, it's crucial for health IT solutions to support interoperability, thereby facilitating the seamless exchange of information and providing clinicians a holistic view of patients.
With the worldwide proliferation of its application programming interface technologies, Allscripts is at the forefront of the movement toward healthcare interoperability. As of January 2018, more than 8,000 registered developers were using Allscripts' intelligent APIs. Additionally, the company has enabled nearly 4 billion API data shares since 2013.
Tina Joros, JD, Allscripts' vice president and general manager of the open business unit, recently responded to several questions for Becker's Hospital Review on health IT innovation.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: Can you tell us about Allscripts' Developer Program?
Tina Joros: In the Open Business Unit, home to the Allscripts Developer Program, our team focuses on connecting innovative applications and devices with Allscripts solutions to advance our vision of a connected community of health across the globe. We reach the United Kingdom, Israel, India, Canada Singapore and Australia. That goal is one all of us in healthcare truly want to see happen. With the connected health philosophy as the foundation, we introduced the developer program 11 years ago, and have since worked with API, including proprietary APIs and industry standard open APIs.
I also can tell you that we crossed the threshold of over one billion data shares for the first time in a single year during the 2017 calendar year and are now crossing over four billion total data shares since we started counting and tracking this metric of interoperability in 2013.
Q: The word "innovation" is thrown around a lot in healthcare. What does real-world innovation look like to you?
TJ: I can share with you what innovation looks like to us, but what's truly important is what does that innovation mean to the patient? What does it look like to the end user— the healthcare provider that ultimately depends on that solution in treating a patient facing a serious health concern?
Thus, real-world innovation depends on choice: Are you looking for a specific technology to solve an existing problem? To stay competitive? Or do you want to be one of the first in healthcare to use a new solution?
We are trying to create a new mentality of innovation for our clients, so they can view innovation as a path to improve overall workflows and connect with patients. We have made our platforms easily accessible and cost effective for developers to use, so they can develop and test their solutions. Then, they can set positive expectations with our clients and demonstrate the true value of these new technologies based on their own testing.
I know innovation in healthcare moves more slowly than in the consumer world. However, if we can remove some of the risk involved in developing a new solution, we give our developers an advantage. By providing a forum for testing solutions and setting expectations, we can increase the relevance and real-world use, and thus the value, of applications and devices evolving from Allscripts Developer Program.
Providing an ecosystem of support involves understanding developers' needs in a holistic way — end to end — from when they first start exploring their options through development and testing of a solution and ultimately supporting its use at a client site. We have designed our Developer Portal to provide support and information at every stage of this journey for all types of individuals who will interact with our program — technical resources building out the integration, business side resources reporting client activations and marketing specialists telling the story of how this solution is making an impact in healthcare. For Allscripts, it is not just about technically connecting a solution, but the overall experience for everyone involved.
Q: What was something you've seen or done recently that you think is truly innovative?
TJ: I've seen the range from basic solutions that save time and money for our clients to patient-facing solutions developed with the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard. A great example of the former is Relaymed, which sends test results instantly and automatically from devices to an EHR. Over the last five years, this application processed 150,000 lab results saving 5,000 hours of time -- and that's just time without counting human error eliminated. Nor does it include potential lost revenue from billing of test results. On average, manual entry of this data results in estimated lost test billing revenues of up to 20 percent, since not all tests are entered into the EHR.
Q: What is one thing that piqued your interest in healthcare?
TJ: Healthcare is something that touches every single one of us — we are all patients, caregivers or involved in the healthcare system at some point in our lives. Personally, I want to make sure the people and tools available to treat me or my loved ones when and if we need it are absolutely the best. I also believe in the value of physicians, nurses and other healthcare providers and I want them to have an experience where technology is making their day easier — we can't afford talented people leaving or never joining the healthcare profession because they are frustrated with the systems and/or tools they have available to do their jobs effectively. It should be the opposite — qualified and talented people should be eager to join the healthcare profession because they are excited to use the technology that is available to help them treat patients and run their practices and health systems! That's primarily what keeps me looking for new innovation and excited about enabling new healthcare technology for our clients.