Healthcare interface engines standardize data flow across disparate clinical data systems—like EHRs and revenue cycle management software—to improve workflows, optimize the delivery of care, and streamline the integration and adoption of new technologies. Healthcare interface engines facilitate the exchange of clinical, financial, and operational data, creating transparency and visibility across health care systems and health IT applications. Leveraging clean, normalized sets of data, healthcare integration engines provides a comprehensive view of patients to clinicians, medical professionals, and businesses that sell directly to healthcare delivery organizations.

• Connect to EHRs and other sources of patient health information and facility data

• Provide interoperability between health care systems

• Capture, exchange, store, and provide access to data via APIs or other web service technologies that adhere to Fast Healthcare Interoperable Resource (HL7 FHIR) or Health Level Seven International (HL7)

A crucial business choice is choosing a new interface engine. The flow of crucial clinical, administrative, and financial data will be impacted by your decision. You must select a solution in accordance with the new Interoperability Rule rules that will provide patients access to the data outlined in the new code. Your team must decide on the vendor, the features to consider, and the implementation priorities. Here is a list of the key characteristics to compare amongst HL7 interface engines.

Ease-of-use

Keep an eye out for elements that demonstrate user-friendliness during your demo session. Some of them consist of:

• intuitive graphical user interface that enables programming-free or programming-based interface development.

• Reusability of current interfaces, which facilitates quick and affordable migration.

• a straightforward learning curve that minimises the need for training.

• User-friendly onboarding reduces change resistance.

• Dashboards that track messages and instantly identify anomalies or unsuccessful messages

The quantity of programming needed

The process of developing the interface should be made easier by your chosen option. A minimal amount of programming should be required to transform data from one standard to another using the interface engine.

The productivity of your team will be significantly reduced by anything beyond the creation of straightforward scripts. You should therefore keep an eye out for an extensive library of connectors that comes with the engine.

Scalability 

Both major facilities with a branch network and primary care settings will benefit from an interface engine that is properly thought out. Make careful to find out from the vendor how many interfaces and systems the engine can integrate in total.

Ask the vendor how many applications the engine has already interacted with before you sign a contract.

You must choose a tried-and-true approach. Ask for recommendations of people you can get in touch with to learn more about how well the interoperability solution is working, if at all possible.

Health Information Standards compliance

Choose a solution that is reliable and can process data and messages from a range of interface standards. This is essential if your EHR has to connect to several applications in various departments or if you have legacy systems. A lot of health information standards must be supported by your engine if you connect your EHR directly to medical equipment.

The following are some of the crucial ones to confirm:

• CDA (various versions) 

• HL7 (versions 2.x, 3.x, FHIR, and IHE)
• DICOM

Quality of Customer Support

Your team will occasionally run across problems and mistakes after installing your new interface engine. You must have round-the-clock help accessible to address them. Healthcare interfaces are crucial, thus prolonged downtime is not an option.

Learn as much as you can about the kind of support the business offers. Do you have live chat access to a representative? Will you have to create a support ticket or send emails? How quickly are problems usually resolved when they arise?

It's crucial to concentrate on the important variables that will increase productivity, cut expenses, and raise the standard of patient care. The correct questions for your vendor will come from your preparation for a demo.

Conclusion

The HL7 interface engine you select for your healthcare business will affect the seamless transfer of clinical data, administration information, and finances. 

KPi-Tech’s skilled developers offer Interface Development services. To identify the best custom or proprietary interfacing solutions, we combine extensive examinations of older healthcare networks with HL7 technology. Among the interface engines we integrate with are Corepoint, Rhapsody, Cloverleaf, HL7 Mirth Connect, and others.