Enabling Cloud-First Healthcare Integration

Healthcare Innovation Article

Executive Summary

InterSystems powers digital transformations in healthcare.
InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect Cloud is a managed integration engine cloud service that provides flexibility and scalability to support the ever increasing needs of healthcare interoperability.

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Healthcare organizations are increasingly turning to digital technology to streamline clinical workflows, improve patient care, and boost business performance. However, legacy IT systems and practices can make this difficult. To overcome these challenges, forward looking health IT leaders are turning to a new generation of cloud-based data integration platforms to simplify operations, overcome staffing challenges, and accelerate the pace of innovation. Cloud integration platforms offer a variety of economic and operational advantages compared to traditional on-premises data integration solutions: it requires no capital investment, is scalable and agile, and offers geo-redundancy and high availability.

Key Considerations

Not all healthcare cloud integration platforms are the same. Healthcare organizations should focus on a number of key considerations, including but not limited to:

1. Networking

If an organization is migrating from an on-premise integration solution to a cloud-based platform, the networking requirements will most likely change. For cloud interfaces, all data in transit must be encrypted, whether through transport layer security (TLS) or virtual private networks (VPNs).

Electronic medical record systems, as well as other high traffic applications, will most likely require a VPN. In addition, internal and external firewall rules must be configured for inbound and outbound traffic. For each instance or environment, the team must evaluate the networking configurations. Some integration platform vendors may offer accelerators to simplify network configuration.

2. Creative Empowerment

Cloud-based integration platforms can come across as “black box” solutions, since the vendor is responsible for managing the application. Mature cloud integration platforms have inherent capabilities to build anything from basic healthcare integrations to more complex pipelines and workflows. It’s important to look for vendors that prioritize flexibility without sacrificing usability.

3. Portability

When moving from an on-premise integration engine to a cloud-based one, interface migration is a critically important consideration. Key questions include whether interfaces will need to be rewritten, whether the cloud-based integration engine will work regardless of cloud provider, how to phase the go-lives, and whether third-party services will be needed to assist in the porting. If the organization is switching vendors, be sure to find out whether the new vendor offers out-of-the-box tools to help with the integration engine migration, as well as what training is required to ensure a seamless migration.

4. Vendor Responsibilities and Support

Cloud is the biggest thing to happen in the healthcare sector for decades. It’s an exciting opportunity to make things better in the long term. As with so many projects, however, it’s more than just a technology or an IT project. When moving to a cloud-native integration platform, take time to evaluate vendor offerings and support.

Alex MacLeod, InterSystems

InterSystems Powers Digital Transformations in Healthcare

InterSystems is a global leader in healthcare data management and integration, working at the intersection of healthcare transformation for payers, providers, and life sciences companies. The privately held firm has been in business for 45 years, operates in over 80 countries, and handles over one billion patient records. Many healthcare organizations use InterSystems as the underpinning for Epic.

InterSystems offers a range of multi-cloud services that can be combined together to meet each organization’s unique requirements.

InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect Cloud is a managed integration engine cloud service that provides flexibility and scalability to support the ever increasing needs of healthcare interoperability.

InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect Cloud is a comprehensive data integration PaaS offering, operated, and managed by InterSystems experts.

At the heart of Health Connect Cloud lies a high-performance, multi-model data engine that seamlessly handles the many formats of healthcare data at high speed, helping you to streamline integration efforts, boost application performance and availability, and free up resources to support core business initiatives. The result is faster project delivery with less time required from developers.

As you evaluate movement to the cloud, you want to prioritize flexibility without sacrificing usability. Integration engines are the lifeblood of healthcare IT systems.

Jessica Jowdy, InterSystems

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