Patients, regulators, and payers are insisting on data exchange in health care. But despite the availability of FHIR and of APIs from many vendors, interoperability is often described as “difficult and “not frictionless” according to Loyd Bittle, CEO and Founder at Innovar Healthcare. It takes a real expert with the right connections to make interoperability a reality for healthcare organizations.
Innovar Healthcare, therefore, focuses on converting patient records between different formats and vendors and getting the patient data where it needs to go. State HIEs, which must deal with a bewildering assortment of formats, are important clients that need help solving that last mile. Innovar Healthcare also branched out to help labs with data sharing when COVID-19 hit, and now is working more and more with digital health companies who have similar data sharing problems.
The problem most organizations face with health data interoperability is that it is not just about the data or the formats. Most IT organizations have the tech chops to be interoperable. However, it takes more than technical knowledge to solve the interoperability problem. You have to understand how the sending and receiving vendor formats and sends the data. This often takes finding the right person at the company who can give you that info.
In the video interview below, Bittle highlights how this sets Innovar Healthcare apart since in most cases they have already built the interface and associated libraries before. Plus, they have the relationships with the interoperability experts at that vendor who can answer any health data sharing questions they may have on a new project. He shared an example of a pediatric EMR vendor that took weeks to integrate with initially, but only took days with their second client.
Common tasks that are bread and butter for Innovar Healthcare include transferring information such as demographics, creating custom formats for clients, and converting data to or from a legacy format. Plus, Innovar offers a unique managed services model. While managed services is popular in other areas of IT, it is not as common in the world of interoperability. However, that is often what companies really want. They don’t want to buy another tool. They just want the data shared to the right place and are happy to pay for that service.
Talking with Innovar’s customer Tele911, they highlighted the benefits they’ve received from the partnership:
Tele911’s growth and product trajectory have largely benefited from Innovar Healthcare’s support. Unlike other vendors who were hesitant about clarity in pricing and product ideation, with Innovar, there’s always a clear picture of what to expect, usually even before the expected timeline.
Watch the video for more background on “last mile” interoperability problems and why Innovar Healthcare can solve them efficiently. Also, be sure to check out this great whitepaper on the 10 Best Practices for a Successful Integration Project.
Learn more about Innovar: https://www.innovarhealthcare.com/
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