A connected foundation
Preparing for the on-demand future of health care
High-quality, sustainable health IT systems must depend on a strategic data framework that serves as the health data platform to interoperate between applications. While much attention has been placed on the EHR system, we believe Corepoint Integration Engine serves as the catalyst for all health data activities and allows IT departments to break free from EHR “data silos” and gain full control of their health data.
Once health data is centralized through Corepoint Integration Engine, the IT team is empowered with full knowledge of system performance and the enormous amount of health data generated every day.
Innovation at Corepoint Health is not dreaming about interoperability. It’s about making it a reality and accelerating forward with modern features. We’re able to anticipate the needs of interfacing teams because we know them better than any other vendor, and we work to deliver tested job-improving components before others have begun to imagine them.
Strategic data framework
One of the oldest debates in health IT is whether to use a single vendor suite or deploy a multivendor approach using technology rated by KLAS as the best in health IT. CIOs have argued over which approach delivers an ideal balance of features, ROI, cost management, and business benefits.
It wasn’t long ago when health IT departments were stuck with the reality of implementing modules from one vendor that worked together, yet didn’t satisfy the needs of every department. Choosing an integrated system with strengths in usability often meant the likelihood of weakness in other areas such as customer service and connectivity with other applications.
While much attention has been placed on the EHR system, the integration layer serves as the catalyst for all health data activities and allows IT departments to break free from EHR “data siloes” and gain full control of their patients’ health data.
Because integrating systems is no longer an obstacle, a hospital can become nimble and responsive, with their IT systems offering a distinct competitive advantage. Integration is no longer the shackles that threaten a CIO’s livelihood.
Advantages creating a strategic data framework with Corepoint Integration Engine
- Updates can be rolled out without affecting other systems
- Quickly respond to market changes
- Easily parse, integrate, and exchange data between applications, systems, and locations
- A strategic integration layer allows hospitals to implement premium solutions at the clinical application layer. This allows other departments to make technology choices that compliment and improve workflows.
Corepoint Health software creates data interoperability between systems and provides actionable insights to data, including real-time alerts for caregivers, audit logging, and full control of each interface without relying on vendors to make needed changes.
As healthcare is set to adopt a modern exchange standard in HL7 FHIR, the future “API economy” means that CIOs can reap the benefits of choosing the right technology for the job.
Health standards
FHIR continues to progress
While FHIR is still under development by HL7, we are seeing a handful of vendors offering mobile applications using the new health data standard, including major EHR vendors such as Cerner and Epic. While the current FHIR-based applications are primarily designed with the healthcare provider in mind, future applications will no doubt give patients unprecedented access to their data, which previously was unavailable and unusable to most mobile applications.
What exactly is FHIR?
What would health data exchange look like if we started from scratch using modern approaches? To answer this question, HL7 International turned to other industries for ideas. Recent interoperability successes pointed strongly to the use of RESTful based APIs.
HL7 FHIR combines the best features of HL7 V2, HL7 V3, and CDA, while leveraging the latest web service technologies. FHIR is based on modular components called “resources,” and these resources can be combined to solve clinical and administrative problems in a practical way.
The FHIR standard is based on the following simple points:
- Faster to learn
- Lower cost to implement
- Scales well from simple to complex
- Flexible
- Free
While FHIR is still under development by HL7, the second Draft Standard for Trial Use (DSTU) became available in 2015, and the first normative edition is planned for 2017. Some of the notable advances in 2016 include:
SMART on FHIR
The SMART project started in 2010 with a $15 million grant from the ONC. The idea was to build an app platform for healthcare allowing support apps to be chosen by clinicians. All the apps use the same underlying set of platform specifications.
SMART on FHIR opens up innovation in healthcare that has not been possible previously. If someone has a bright idea and creates a SMART on FHIR app, the healthcare provider doesn’t need to wait for an EHR vendor to adopt the idea. Assuming they have a SMART on FHIR-compliant EHR, they can immediately take advantage of the bright idea through the use of the app.
The Argonaut Project
Argonaut is a supporting movement of FHIR in the U.S. led by volunteers. Individuals within HL7 and at major EHR vendors have joined forces to keep FHIR project on target with its self-proclaimed deadlines for adoption. This focus was especially important considering the open API requirements for Meaningful Use Stage 3.
The goals of the Argonaut Project include building a U.S.-specific profile and combining resources to help market and drive adoption of the standard.
This collaboration will help drive a cleaner, more consistent standard for the U.S., along with a speedier adoption due to the buy-in of the larger vendor organizations that are participating.
Where does FHIR go from here?
The industry is waiting to embrace a standard that offers something better, but given the embedded nature of HL7 V2, the transition will not happen overnight. FHIR tries to fill the gaps that exist with the standards in use today. While the healthcare marketplace will decide whether FHIR survives, coexists, or replaces other products, the modern technologies that it is based on (RESTful, JSON) have already won over other industries.
Reasons to upgrade your interface engine
There are many reasons hospitals and healthcare providers make the decision to replace existing integration engines. Frequently, changes are made to replace sunsetted applications, to upgrade and build a strategic, interoperable data framework or prior to an EHR upgrade.
Improve patient care
A full portrait of the patient’s care history provides context and insights that can provide the highest levels of quality care, which is the intention behind all technology investments. An integration engine allows caregivers to make the best decisions with the current data, at the time of care.
Allow your IT department to do more
Corepoint Integration Engine allows developers to create interfaces in hours, rather than days or weeks. Imagine the additional accomplishments your team would achieve if they could ditch using outdated code to build interfaces?
Own your patient data
Your organization has spent millions in technology investments, yet you cannot access and utilize the patient data contained in locked databases. Corepoint Integration Engine allows hospitals to stop relying on vendors to build and maintain interfaces and “own” the data in every workflow in production.
Be proactive, not reactive
Modern IT departments require an integration engine that offers all data exchange methods in use in healthcare, allowing your team to confidently tackle any integration or workflow task involving patient data.
Scalability as you grow
Whether your organization is expanding or remaining independent, the increasing demands for patients’ health data are growing at an unprecedented rate. Agile organizations need the ability to quickly scale to stay ahead of future demands, which is possible using Corepoint Integration Engine and Microsoft technology.
Become an industry leader
Healthcare needs trailblazers who lead with vision, creativity, and action. With Corepoint Health, you’ll have the necessary features to turbo charge your activities and become recognized as a regional, state, and even national leader. Modern patients have greater demands of their care providers, and your team will be ready to exceed those demands and demonstrate what else they should expect from a modern health system.
Customer insight
Using analytics to monitor workflow
Using Corepoint Integration Engine to facilitate health data flow, Automated Health Management Services employs a business intelligence analytics dashboard that serves their workflow similar to a helicopter flying over a city traffic grid, with each interface acting as an intersection with the potential to stall workflow.
CEO Dennis Loucks answered the following questions about the intelligence he gains from the data running through Corepoint Integration Engine.
Why is taking control of your health data from EHR repositories important for analytics?
“I’m a big proponent of trying to stay local and independent of the vendor. If you get a copy of the HL7 feed, you’ve got a much wider selection of information and metrics to deal with than you ever get through an EMR vendor, who are notorious for filtering out things that they don’t think are important. In other words, if the data is not important to their product, then it’s not important. I’m not sure I see it that way.
Data sharing is a money-making proposition for EMR providers and they won’t operate outside of their cloud at all, typically. I consider our operations a cloud as well because we’ve been building this infrastructure for so long. They’re collecting data for the same reasons that I do, the only difference is that it’s not really going to benefit me at all.”
How has Corepoint Integration Engine helped improve other areas of workflow?
“We incorporated a new facility that was printing reports all day for billing. We set them up to use HL7 and created some workflows that allowed them to stop printing and even stop handling paper. That dramatically improved their daily work—the two people who handled the paper reports could barely keep up and barely had time to sit down and code the reports.
Something that seems minor on the surface can result in a huge improvement in those individuals’ daily work. They had no idea that everything could be automated. They told me, ‘I don’t know how you did that, but that’s the greatest thing ever happen to us!’ That kind of thing goes a long way to improve morale, productivity, and profits.”
Were you able to perform data analysis prior to partnering with Corepoint Health?
“The fastest way we’d get anything from the vendors would be the next day. It would take another 48 hours or so to parse the data, which obviously is not real time and gives me no actionable insights.
Now we are able to automate billing workflows using HL7 and the engine—in fact we don’t touch paper anymore, everything’s workflow driven. The engine actually drives each workflow and saves us a lot of time and reduces the chance of order-entry errors that can occur.”
How has Corepoint Health improved operations?
“We started using the integration engine to populate SQL databases that in turn feed dashboards, which gives us real-time analytics for workload projections, and much more. It’s extremely beneficial when managing 100s of physicians in different locations.
During the day, if things are backing up, we know right where to go to find the bottlenecks and take the appropriate action to get things moving again.”
