SynapticHealth Blog

SynapticHealth is the Healthcare Information Services Exchange – a shopping mall of information services stores specific to healthcare, complete with all the tools required to discuss, list, publish, consume, sponsor, mash up and collaborate on healthcare information services.

 

A healthcare information exchange (HIE) is a source of healthcare information services – a sponsor and/or publisher of information services.   Many Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs) are this kind of HIE.

 

HIEs should have a presence at SynapticHealth – an information services store in the mall, so to speak – or – they should develop the same capabilities and have SynapticHealth link to these facilities (more on this later).

 

Challenges HIEs face that SynapticHealth can help address include:

 

·         Scalability: HIEs are not equipped to plug their services in.  Oftentimes, a pilot level HIE tries to connect a couple of hospital systems with a couple physician systems to exchange 2-3 data sets (transactions) and the pilot itself is $1MM in healthcare systems integration.  Preposterous.  Un-scalable.  An HIE will never develop enough adapters, interfaces, data exchange protocols, etc. etc. to be meaningful – so at best, the strategy has to be to develop a platform that the HIE’s entire community can develop to.  Why not develop approaches that:

o    Leverage updated integration technology and information exchange capabilities

o    Let the external development community install and integrate information services

·         Replicability: An HIE develops 5 information services, say data exchange of 5 transaction formats (continuity of care record, medication history, e-prescribing data, etc. – this would be awesome).  At great expense, they pilot these services between 3 hospitals and 3 physician groups, all of whom are on disparate systems – so you effectively have dozens and dozens of services by the time you account for the discreet data set, the publishing system and the consuming system, the transaction format, and more – BUT – you can rest assured that numerous other HIEs want to exchange the same data between the same systems.  Why can’t one HIE leverage what another has built?    System A publishes an outbound CCR consumed by System B – why build this at $175/hour 400 times across the country? 

·         Collaboration: Establish a presence in the SynapticHealth Forums to have common ground for discussing your information services.  Use the Directory to list downloads, links to other services, reference guides, specific information services including interfaces and adapters, etc., etc.   Promote collaboration.  Give the external development community the tools and the reasons to want to incorporate your information services and solutions into their efforts.  Perhaps give them a profit motive.

·         Promote Mash Ups: Move down the path towards adapters and APIs that invite the broader community to develop your information service exchange capabilities for you.  Consider where letting the external development community consume your apps into their apps might be valuable and develop to that end-game.

·         Reseller Distribution Channel and Revenue Model: List your information services  ‘assets’ in the SynapticHealth directory and share them, sell them, resell them, etc. on the SynapticGrid.  Get the market incented to re-distribute your apps.  Build novel distribution channels via SynapticHealth.

·         Relevance and “Meaningful Use”:  A presence in SynapticHealth and the promotion of scalability, replicability, mass collaboration, mash-ups, and alternative distribution channels all start to amp up the relevance of your HIE and this must certainly improve your ability to demonstrate meaningful use. 

 

With SynapticHealth, any HIE becomes a platform that leverages the Healthcare Information Services Exchange and the SynapticGrid in specific ways:

 

·         Listing of Information Services such as adapters, integration-as-a-service, hosted applications, protocols, etc.

·         Platform-as-a-Service

·         HIE-certified Services, Apps, Widgets, etc

·         Scalable HIE Services developed by the broader community.  Infrastructure, glue, etc. that can expand organically across the broader community, leverage a wider audience, leverage what other HIEs are doing, etc.

·         APIs and SDKs that bring the broader developer community into the game.

 

:Let’s talk about how SynapticHealth can help HIEs. 

 

Get Synaptic.

What does it mean to get Synaptic?

1) Thrive in the healthcare ecosystem, the distributed network of disparate healthcare information technology (HCIT) systems by enabling healthcare information exchange (HIE).  Get truly interoperable.

2) Offer solutions to HIE problems that are: a) scalable: reconsider what tools you are using to get interoperable.  Open up to the larger developer community so that they have reasons to consume your applications, namely that they can improve them for uses you can’t imagine, b) replicable: when one solution provider or institution enables data exchange from A to B, we know that there are 500 other end-users that need to do practically the same thing.  How do we leverage this work over and over again, even provide a distribution channel for it?  c) "mash-able
" or "mash-up-able" - what’s the word there?  You get the idea – able to be combined with other services.  d) Game-changers: solutions that commoditize connectivity and data exchange in favor of value-added information exchange services like governance, straight-through processing rates, and reporting/analytics.  e) transparent: by this we mean that applications, services, apps, widgets etc are not just “interoperable” because some company or certification body says so.  They are interoperable because they are open to improvement, data exchange, etc. – one way or another, consumers, developers, etc. can see how many services, APIs, etc. that one solution has that make it synaptic.

Synapses are sparks between two connection points – data, information, ideas, memories, creativity, etc.  The more connection points using a similar service, the higher the need for scalability.  The more open and transparent the service, the more likely other developers can map to it, consume data from it, etc – or, the more likely it is to be “mashed up” into other services.

For HCIT and HIE vendors – or HCIT vendors in need of more HIE – these are the specific things SynapticHealth can help you answer:

Where is your API, adapter, information service, etc.?: This is really a two-part question and answer.

First, the assumes that you can show the world how you publish and or consume data.  Most applications cannot do this reasonably well.  SynapticHealth can clear a path for you through the usual healthcare systems integration applications towards updated, scalable, interoperability solutions.  Who knows – it might go well beyond your ability to live in the distributed network of disparate systems that is healthcare – it may transform your outlook on your entire application suite – not just your HIE capabilities.

Secondly, once you have a strategy for publishing and consuming data – getting interoperable – or Synaptic – how do you tell the world about it and distribute these information services.  The SynapticHealth Information Services Exchange, of course.  You need a store in our mall.  Shoppers for your information services need to know where to go to find these information services.  More important, in a “many-to-many” environment of stores in the mall – the Information Services Exchange – developers can improve upon your developers’ work.  Contact us for more clarification on this.

Is Your App Synaptic?  Does your healthcare solution thrive in the healthcare/HCIT/HIE ecosystem?  SynapticHealth can chart a course to more evolved HIE as well as improving your entire application suite.

Get Synaptic.