Open APIs – What Holds Healthcare Back?

In a recent blog post from TigerText, they review the technologists entering the healthcare space with experience in other verticals and how they can be in for some surprises.

3D ultrasound machines in the same room with pagers and whiteboards. Multi-million dollar software systems, installed on premises with few or no standardized interfaces for full two-way integration with other systems. Having entered the healthcare space with a background in enterprise software, the lack of standardized interface options is surprising.

Strong integration capabilities create real value. A clinician or other health care provider may at any moment need knowledge of lab results, information from a consulting physician, to inform food services of a change, to provide information to the primary care physician, to respond to a nurse call event, or literally hundreds of other events and data. What does it take to create and support such a system of action, and how as an industry can we improve?

A System of Action vs. System of Record

A System of Record requires that all available information is stored completely and accurately. A System of Action, on the other hand, requires that information and resources be readily available to inform or initiate action, with appropriate security and privacy constraints, and that records of action taken are stored completely and accurately. One critical requirement relates to “Open APIs”, an area where healthcare seems to lag. What holds healthcare back in this area, and what is changing? As capabilities change and advance, what should we prepare for? TigerText CEO Brad Brooks identifies Open APIs as a critical part of our opportunity to reduce toil: “With the rise of smartphones and an open API cloud-based communication platform, health systems can meaningfully reduce Toil and restore time for meaningful care to its physicians and nurses.” more…

Non-Healthcare Enterprise Software

Many software ecosystems support robust open API capabilities. These include support for authentication, data transfer, data updates, and more. Small vendors tend to make their APIs more generally available, and larger vendors tend to have processes in place to control access. These standard interfaces have made it simpler and more efficient to connect disparate systems and create value through integration. Engineers can relatively quickly implement valuable new capabilities spanning multiple systems. Numerous services provide connectivity solutions, ranging from prosumer and SMB focused solutions like IFTTT and Zapier to enterprise solutions including Mulesoft, Jitterbit, and Apigee. Even older technologies like XML/SOAP have widely available SDKs for most languages, and REST API capabilities are available in almost any relatively modern language.

Healthcare Software

Leading healthcare organizations are certainly aware of the benefits of standardized, open, and fully capable interfaces, and these organizations are full of intelligent, highly educated technologists and clinicians. Nevertheless, a small fraction of these capabilities are widely available in the modern healthcare system.

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