Epic and Other EHR Vendors Caught in Dilemmas by APIs (Part 1 of 2)

The HITECH act of 2009 (part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) gave an unprecedented boost to an obscure corner of the IT industry that produced electronic health records. For the next eight years they were given the opportunity to bring health care into the 21st century and implement common-sense reforms in data sharing and analytics. They largely squandered this opportunity, amassing hundreds of millions of dollars while watching health care costs ascend into the stratosphere, and preening themselves over modest improvements in their poorly functioning systems.

This was not solely a failure of EHR vendors, of course. Hospitals and clinicians also needed to adopt agile methods of collaborating and using data to reduce costs, and failed to do so. They’re sweating profusely now, as shown in protests by the American Medical Association and major health care providers over legislative changes that will drastically reduce their revenue through cuts to insurance coverage and Medicaid. EHR vendors will feel the pain of a thousand cuts as well.

I recently talked to Dr. Travis Good, CEO of Datica that provides data integration and storage to health care providers. We discussed the state of EHR interoperability, the roles of third-party software vendors, and in particular the new “app store” offered by Epic under the name Orchard. Although Datica supports integration with a dozen EHRs, 70% of their business involves Epic. So we’ll start with the new Orchard initiative...