“API-Fying” healthcare services
“API-Fying” healthcare services
*Reposted* — originally published on 7/12/2021 on byte2bedside.com
One of the revolutionary advances in software and internet services is the emergence of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow for processes to occur between software applications in a consistent manner that can be easily scaled.
APIs make it possible for consumers to conduct and receive all sorts of services such as online banking and ordering merchandise with a consistent experience that is high quality and low cost. At the foundation of these services lies a series of data exchanges and processes carried out between different software applications that must be consistently executed and easily scaled. APIs provide the interaction points between software applications to allow this to happen.
Imagine if next time you order an item from Amazon, after clicking the “order” button, you are instead instructed to wait for a phone call from the merchant to confirm your order. The phone call comes in three days (although there is a 20% chance that it may never come), which ends up going to your voicemail. You check your voicemail and call the merchant back, only to be greeted by someone who was not aware that you had even placed the order, and asks for you to go through the order information again. You describe to the representative the item that you want to order, but it turns out that the item originally listed on the website is no longer available, but there is an alternative brand that can ship in three weeks, but they are unable to tell you anything more about the product, or even how much it costs. And it turns out that if you want to buy a different item, you will have to go through a different lengthy and complicated process that changes depending on what item you order.
The above scenario is not far from the realities of what patients have to go through to receive services in healthcare, such as scheduling an appointment, getting a referral, or getting medical records. Similar to software processes, healthcare services also involve interaction points between people, software, and organizations that require multiple exchanges of information that results in some action (eg. an appointment getting scheduled). There are of course some key differences between getting a referral for an orthopedic surgeon for a knee replacement and ordering trash bags from Amazon, but the underlying need for consistency, efficiency, and scalability applies to healthcare services just as much (if not more so) as online shopping. Countless medical errors and unnecessary waste occurs in healthcare due to the lack of these qualities.
When thinking about the potential for informatics in healthcare, I am particularly excited about the opportunities to “API-fy” healthcare services; that is, to leverage data, software, IT infrastructure, and processes to create “APIs” (both literally and figuratively) that can make healthcare interaction points more consistent, efficient, and scalable. What if a patient with a worrisome skin lesion could secure a referral with an available dermatologist within minutes, rather than having to play a months long game of back and forth phone tag with insurance companies and schedulers that may result in delays in care that could turn out to be deadly? There are many interactions and processes in the back end that would need to take place for this to occur, many of which could be addressed by actual software-software APIs, and others by human and organizational driven processes that can still follow the principles of software APIs to deliver the needed consistency, efficiency, and scalability.
Just as how software APIs have evolved from just code into products, I envision these healthcare “APIs” to also emerge from disparate processes into packaged products and services that involve software, data, and organizational mechanisms.