Interoperability is a key need in healthcare today, with the growing focus on collating and sharing data. Scottsdale-based Healthcare Services Platform Consortium was founded to create a platform model that would allow users to download an application and use it with only minor configuration adjustments, explains Oscar Diaz, CEO, comparing such convenience to iOS and Android platforms.
HSPC is a provider-led, not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder organization aiming to focus application development on a new-generation platform through alignment of leading healthcare delivery organizations, vendors, system integrators and a venture-led investor group. The consortium’s primary objective is to leverage hard-won work on Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) at the Veterans Administration, Intermountain Healthcare, Arizona State University, Regenstrief Institute and other organizations to accelerate application development through an open standards-based, SOA platform and a create a new marketplace for semantic, native interoperability in healthcare.
“In healthcare today, it can take 6 to 12 months to get an application to run when you bring it in,” Diaz says, “and it can take one to two years to build an application.” HSPC is building a platform model than can, literally, be used to build an application, according to Diaz. “We hope it will facilitate a lot of innovation in healthcare,” he says, noting the enormous cost of an app makes it hard for a small company to break into the market.
But HSPC’s primary effort is to create data models that provide semantic, native interoperability. Currently, Diaz explains, doctors have to sift through a lot of data to get the information they need. HSPC’s model enables doctors to integrate information based on specific workflow.
And, in terms of standards efforts, he notes it is not unusual for a large enterprise to have as many as 5,000 applications that need to be integrated so they talk to each other — and it can cost $25,000 per year to support one interface.
