What to Look for in Application Programming Interfaces?

Although EHR adoption is becoming more widespread throughout the healthcare industry, interoperability and patient data sharing still pose significant challenges to providers. To address those challenges, the healthcare industry can adopt application programming interfaces (APIs) that other industries, such as finance and travel, have already implemented.

“The advantage in the API enabled app world is the patients have their data, then they decide if they want it to be used for research or other purposes they may want, as opposed to finding an efficient way for patients to consent for data to be used by researchers,” explained ONC in a 2020 API report.

Patient access to data, patient data exchange, and integrating clinical decision support (CDS) tools for prescribing antibiotics are the leading API adoption benefits.