EHRs, IoT, Revenue Cycle Bring Opportunities for Healthcare APIs

Healthcare APIs are headed for a central role in EHR interoperability, but may also find a home within the Internet of Things, remote monitoring programs, and the healthcare revenue cycle.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are quickly becoming a critical tool for healthcare organizations looking to build interoperable connections, and it is likely that this new standard for health data exchange will keep growing in importance during the next few years. A new report from Market Research Engine (MRE) predicts healthy growth for the nascent healthcare API ecosystem, forecasting a 4 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) that will produce a $234 million market by 2024.

Open APIs such as FHIR, the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource developed by HL7, as well as custom interfaces developed by individual vendors, will find themselves in high demand across many healthcare use cases. EHR data exchange may seem the most pressing at the moment, as providers seek the interoperability capabilities that will allow them to engage in population health management, advanced big data analytics, and value-based care.

“In a health care market where APIs are commonplace, patients could have easy, efficient access to their own data, which would help them understand their own health and make more informed choices," envisioned Professor Robert Huckman and White House policy adviser Maya Uppaluru in an article for the Harvard Business Review last year. "Providers would be empowered by innovative user interfaces and analytics platforms that could support their clinical decision making," they continued. "Researchers could have easier access to detailed clinical and claims data to create hypotheses and identify trends...