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Description

Application programming interfaces (APIs) underpin the progression from data to knowledge to action in so many walks of life. In healthcare, APIs have recently received national attention as Medicare and Medicaid began requiring doctors and hospitals to provide their patients with digital access to their health data through patient-facing APIs. Now the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released groundbreaking rules for standardized APIs as a cornerstone of national interoperability and patient access. As healthcare’s API era launches, our panel will present four key perspectives on patient-facing APIs—academic research, frontline health systems, app innovators and developers, and national policy—and strategies and priority use cases in the real world today. We will present findings of a just-completed national study of leading health systems and their uses of patient-facing APIs, including best practices, early challenges, and potential policy implications, followed by initial research on patients’ usage of those APIs, a deeper look at one leading health system’s strategy and experience, a leading app developer’s perspective, and ONC’s major policy proposal this year using APIs to advance patient access and interoperability. This panel provides an eagerly anticipated first look at real-world usage and impacts of patient-facing APIs.

Learning Objective: 1) Learn and discuss key perspectives on patient-facing APIs—academic research, frontline health systems, app innovators and developers, and national policy—and strategies and priority use cases in the real world today.
2) Learn the key findings of a just-completed national study of leading health systems and their uses of patient-facing APIs, including best practices, early challenges and pitfalls, and potential policy implications.

Authors:

Aaron Neinstein (Presenter)
University of California, San Francisco

Julia Adler-Milstein (Presenter)
University of California, San Francisco

William Morris (Presenter)
Cleveland Clinic Main Campus

Elise Sweeney Anthony (Presenter)
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

Anil Sethi (Presenter)
Ciitizen Corporation

Presentation Materials:

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