Most vendors now use APIs to extend EHR functionality, ONC says
The University of California San Francisco, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the California Health Care Foundation, and ScaleHealth developed a survey to learn more about application programming interface integrations, barriers encountered during API integration, and API-relevant policy efforts.
WHY IT MATTERS
ONC indicated in a HealthIT Buzz blog on Thursday that the study published in JAMIA last month not only showed high adoption of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard among healthcare technology companies surveyed, but EHR companies were implementing standards-based APIs and making them available to external users “well before” December 31, 2022. deadline that requires them to use HL7’s FHIR standard for certified APIs.
“These new data reveal the broad use of the technology among its intended users: third-party application and software developers,” said ONC study authors Wes Barker, Catherine Strawley and Benjamin Rosner in the release after.
The survey also found that approximately 57% of respondents said they used both standards-based and proprietary APIs to integrate with an EHR, while 24% stated they worked about equally well with both APIs.
“Enterprises face barriers to adopting standards-based APIs, including high costs, a lack of realistic clinical trial data, and a lack of data elements that are interesting or valuable,” the researchers said in the research report.
Barker, Strawley and Rosner further explained in ONC’s blog that these results “validate other concerns raised by members of the healthcare IT community, particularly app developers and other digital healthcare companies, about the limited scope of the current certified APIs and barriers to entry such as fees, data access, and developer support, which impact the realization of APIs ‘without special effort’ as required by the 21st Century Cures Act.”
THE BIG TREND
Certain requirements in ONC’s recent HTI-1 final rule are also intended to “resolve some persistent barriers by reducing the effort to use these APIs,” Barker, Strawley, and Rosner noted.
“Specifically, standardizing requirements to publish electronic FHIR endpoints and adopting the United States Core Data for Interoperability version 3.”
HTI-1 determined that as of January 1, 2026, USCDI v3 would be the only USCDI version required within the certification program. The agency published USCDI 4 standards last year. ONC is currently seeking comments on Draft USCDI version 5.
These standards for access, exchange, and use of electronic health information are a key source of national interoperability for compliance-blocking information.
Breaking information blocking rules can cost non-compliant providers thousands of dollars.
The Cures ACT, which codified secure, programmatic access to a patient’s electronic health information in 2016, means “information sharing is expected,” said Micky Tripathi, national coordinator for health IT and CMS deputy chief administrator Jonathan Blum . article about negative incentives for healthcare providers and their consequences.
ON THE RECORD
“Studies like these allow ONC and its partners to better understand community needs and evaluate the implementation of healthcare IT policies,” Barker, Strawley and Rosner said on the agency’s blog.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.