During our recent webinar, Let’s Keep You Connected: Tips for Managing Interface Communication Efficiently, Implementation Programmer Derek Prim shared practical guidance on filtering and transformations, auditing, message searches, interface creation, connectivity options, and other capabilities that can help healthcare IT teams manage increasingly connected environments.
Here are several questions healthcare IT teams should consider when evaluating their approach to interface management.
What is a Healthcare Interface Engine, and Why is it Important?
A healthcare interface engine is middleware that sits between an EHR and the systems or vendors exchanging information with it. It provides a centralized way to manage how data moves between those systems. In many healthcare environments, that includes HL7 messages exchanged between the EHR and connected applications or vendors.
During the webinar, Derek Prim put it simply: An interface engine works like a traffic cop. When a message comes in, it steps in front and directs the message to the right place safely and securely, making any necessary changes along the way.
This centralized approach becomes increasingly valuable as organizations add systems and vendors. With point-to-point interfaces, each new destination may require another individual connection from the EHR, increasing the cost and effort required to build, maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot them.
An interface engine can instead receive information once and route it to multiple destinations based on established rules. For healthcare IT teams, that means fewer separate connections to manage and more flexibility as new systems and vendors are added.
Why is Healthcare Interface Management Becoming More Challenging?
Healthcare interoperability rarely involves a single EHR communicating with one external system. Information may need to move between the EHR, clinical applications, departmental systems, outside vendors, and other technologies, each with its own requirements for how data is received and processed.
As more systems are connected, a single incoming message can generate multiple transactions as it is filtered, transformed, and routed to different destinations. During the webinar, for example, 10 incoming messages resulted in 30 successful transactions after filtering, transformation, and outbound routing.
When something goes wrong, confirming that a message left the EHR may only be the beginning. IT teams may also need to determine whether the appropriate filter was applied, whether the message was transformed correctly, which destinations received it, and where communication may have failed. Without clear visibility, finding the source of the problem can take more time than it should.
Audit trails can show what changed and when, while searchable message logs allow teams to narrow results by interface, status, date range, or specific message data. Message tracking can also show where information entered the engine and each destination it reached. That makes it easier for teams to pinpoint where communication broke down and move toward a resolution.
How Can Healthcare Organizations Improve Interface Communication?
As interface environments grow, IT teams need practical ways to keep communication manageable and maintain visibility into how information moves between systems.
Monitor interface activity.
Visibility into failed or unexpected activity can help IT teams identify issues sooner, while searchable logs and message tracking provide the context needed to investigate what happened.
Use filters to control message flow.
Not every message needs to reach every connected system. Filters allow teams to establish conditions that determine which messages continue to a particular destination.
Transform data to meet system requirements.
Applications and vendors may require information in different formats. Transformations allow teams to modify message content as it moves through the interface engine to meet the requirements of receiving systems.
Support different connection methods.
Vendors do not always communicate using the same technology. Supporting methods such as MLLP, FTP, SFTP, web services, and file-based communication gives organizations more flexibility as technical requirements change.
Plan for continued growth.
New applications, vendors, and workflows introduce additional connections and data flows. A scalable approach can help organizations accommodate that growth without requiring a separate point-to-point connection for every new integration.
Final Thoughts
Reliable interface communication is fundamental to healthcare interoperability, but maintaining that reliability becomes more demanding as the number of systems, vendors, and data flows increases.
For IT teams, effective interface management can make that complexity easier to handle. Better visibility can speed up troubleshooting, routing and transformations can reduce manual work, and flexible connectivity can make it easier to support changing vendor requirements.
EasyConnect Jaguar™ brings routing, filtering, transformations, auditing, searchable message logs, message tracking, and multiple connectivity options together in one interface environment. Organizations can manage their own interfaces or work with iatricSystems based on their internal resources and needs.
To connect with our interoperability expert Derek Prim, or to learn how EasyConnect Jaguar™ can support your interface management needs, click the link below: