“On an average I’d estimate we’re saving a good 75% of our development time using Corepoint, and that means I’m spending more time enhancing workflows and ultimately, improving patient care for our lab.”
Sung Pyo, Lab Systems Engineer
Cleveland HeartLab serves practitioners throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. The lab is internationally renowned for their testing of biomarkers that predict cardiovascular risk, helpful in the prevention of heart disease.
Sung Pyo, Lab Systems Engineer at Cleveland HeartLab, spent some time chatting with us about connecting with clients within the laboratory environment. Sung has streamlined connections with EHRs of all shapes and sizes, which provides significant operational advantages in their highly competitive business environment.
What is the value of Corepoint Integration Engine for Cleveland HeartLab?
“Corepoint has enabled us to streamline our interface timeline for adding connections with new and existing clients. Our main challenge is that a number the of small doctors’ offices and providers we support employ a wide variety of technologies. We get a lot of small EMR vendors with interesting interpretations of the data exchange standards.
That’s where Corepoint comes in most handy for us, allowing us to be very agile and swift in modeling outbound orders or other types of HL7 messages to fit the requirements of the client systems. Sometimes, when you look at what the client is asking for and what the spec calls for, you quickly realize they can be very different.
We start with a standard HL7 spec, then send out sample messages and the client comes back and tells us, “I need this change, this change, this change,” and we do them. With our previous engine, we had somebody doing the actual programming every step of the way. It used to take weeks to be able to make changes or test an interface, now we test as we develop and make changes in a matter of days.”
Interfacing efficiently – Customer Perspective
With Corepoint Integration Engine, we have confidence in each interface before it goes live due to the ability to test large batches of messages beforehand. That test-as-you-develop approach has shortened our development cycle quite a bit. Like I said before, projects that would have taken us a week or two, now take us a couple of days. The flexibility Corepoint gives me in dealing with a wide range of EMRs is extremely valuable to our business.
Can you think of a specific example where that flexibility came into play?
“One of the above and beyond things we do here is give clients a nice metric report instead of just text results. It’s a pretty graphic-intensive pdf. Over time, our clients started to ask for that pdf embedded into the HL7 message. Embedding the HL7 message is fine and our system does that natively, but all of those EMRs we deal with don’t want it in the same place.
They’re all different, and the development time to individually configure every single connection would have been prohibitive. However, it is easy for us with Corepoint because I can take that message and model a template that I apply to those EMRs as they request a feature. Now, using Corepoint’s flexibility I can make requested changes using saved templates and be done in a quarter of the time.”
How do you manage supporting multiple vendor specifications?
“Sometimes when vendors provide us the spec, which we adhere to, we still run into issues with what’s provided. Other times, some smaller vendors don’t even provide specs. Some vendors will tell us, ‘Send us a message and let’s go ahead and get this process started and then we’ll look at it. We’ll tell you where and how we want things and you can make the changes.’ Half the time they would read the output and say it’s great, but when we start sending messages we realize the prescribed spec was completely off.
Unsurprisingly, we decided we wanted to change that process, so we created a base template in Corepoint that we now use as a starting point. Now, we can say, ‘This is our base message. This is what we like to send.’ Then we make changes from there. We’re able to avoid limiting the message from the very beginning so more of the clinical information gets sent across.
As a result I feel much more comfortable working with those smaller vendors and EMRs than I used to because I have flexibility in Corepoint. I know that whatever the vendors throw at me it’s no big deal, we can handle it. It’s very easy for me to make changes and not have to worry. Whereas before, when I received a certain vendor request I’d say, ‘Oh, this is going to take forever. How am I going to make these changes?’ Now I think, ‘Oh, you know what? Give me your best shot and I’ll have no problem handling it.’ Our confidence is high right now.”
Exchange data with clients quickly – Customer Perspectives
What other advantages do shorter turnaround times provide?
“As I’ve become more familiar with Corepoint, the shorter development time is really saving us money. I can work on three, four, five, six interfaces at a time because the amount of development time I’m dedicating to each one is so much less than it used to be.
Now, I’m more efficient in the fact that I can sit here and take on more projects rather than doing one at a time or spending a very large amount of time on one particular project. On an average I’d estimate we’re saving 75% of our development time using Corepoint, and that means I’m spending more time enhancing workflows and ultimately, improving patient care for our lab.”
What else has helped you become agile in response to customers’ demands?
“Your support is probably the best and the most responsive that I’ve ever dealt with. At first, though, I didn’t have high expectations. Based on my experience with some other vendors, I’m used to calling in and conversations ending with, ‘Yeah, no one’s available right now.’
So, when I had to call Corepoint support and somebody answered straight away, I was caught a little off guard. After telling them my problem, the support personnel on the other end said, ‘Well, let’s get a remote session and we’ll take a look at it.’ I was a bit flabbergasted because I thought, ‘Wait, aren’t you going to take my name and number and see if anyone’s available?’
The representative was actually someone who could help me, and after taking a look at my configuration, she walked me through what I needed to do. Lo and behold, less than 30 minutes later, I’m up and running and the issue is resolved. The support is by far the best I’ve ever dealt with.”
