The article “EHR interface costs likely to plummet” written by Mary Mosquera, references statements made by John Halamka from a recent Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) board meeting—the cost to interface EHR applications will drop from $20-30K per implementation to $5-6K based on standards increasing in interoperability.

I am not certain where the original pricing came from, but it is good news since price is one of the major barriers (outside of competitive issues) that stand in the way of establishing interfaces between health applications and systems.

Cost is a driving factor for the use of interoperability standards within clinical intelligence and population decision support initiatives. Recombinant is using components such as continuity of care document (CCD) standards as a method to create analytics capable of separating patients into risk groups using decision support logic.

My hope is that things remain open. As the price to interface through standards diminishes, it should become easier to implement standardized decision support at an individual or population-level, while remaining consistent.

Dan Housman
Managing Director, Analytical Applications

Labels: Clinical Intelligence