Zen’s Integration as a Service Resource Guide

The most popular interoperability discussion these days is the concept of Integration as a Service (IaaS). As a relatively new concept, it is important that healthcare organizations understand what Integration as a Service is and how best to leverage the concept to drive scalability, efficiency, and security when exchanging healthcare data.

Defining Integration as a Service (IaaS) – What is it?

When you break down the phrase “Integration as a Service (IaaS),” you have two primary aspects:

Integration: the ability of two or more healthcare technologies to send and receive information between the technologies. Integrations are built to support various file formats, types, and communication protocols. Simply put, it’s the way technologies talk to each other.

Service: the assistance given to organizations to implement, maintain, update, and fine-tune technology platforms and capabilities. The level of service provided will often vary by the arrangement a client has with the company performing the service. For example, you may be familiar with the term “software as a service” (SaaS) which provides a hosted software solution, with the vendor supporting both the software and the server environment.

Knowing these two components makes the combined meaning of the phrase “Integration as a Service” clearer.

Integration as a Service (IaaS): the hosted third-party software and assistance an organization leverages to create, maintain, and expand the ability to send and receive information data between technologies that are critical to its business.

Another phrase that may be used in association with IaaS is “integration hub”.  This reflects the fact that the integration tool that is part of an integration as a service offering typically provides a single central hub to manage interfaces.

Three Healthcare IaaS Use Cases

When applied to the healthcare marketplace, the definition has the same foundational meaning. However, it will vary a bit based on the type of healthcare organization and the intent.

Top Five Reasons to Adopt an Integration as a Service (IaaS) Model for Interoperability

The benefits of pursuing the IaaS model for interfaces development and deploying health information exchange are numerous. Here are the five most important reasons why a switch to an IaaS model for healthcare organizations should be considered.

Zen’s Gemini solution brings interface technology, engineering, and services together to help your organization succeed in the growing demands for data exchange. Gemini helps organizations:

1. Minimizes integration technology infrastructure costs. A hosted integration platform in a high availability, HITRUST infrastructure will have much lower start-up costs than attempting to stand up a comparable environment at a healthcare facility.

2. Relieves database and infrastructure management burden. IaaS will help healthcare organizations avoid the tedious and laborious duties of managing the data infrastructure. Use your organization’s staff to focus more on supporting patient care, not on operating systems management, interface engine maintenance, application load balancing, or database scaling.

3. Expands access to expert interoperability resources. It is very costly to hire and train staff in healthcare organizations with expertise in health IT-related interface standards. A healthcare focused IaaS solution will bring hands-on experience with healthcare standards such as IHE, HL7, FHIR, CCD/CCDA, and data quality best practices. As result, designing and deploying use-case driven interoperability workflows for current and future data exchange needs becomes much easier.

4. Extends technology access and portability. Healthcare organizations who host their own infrastructure typically purchase integration technology supplied by a vendor owned by or spun out a software company with proprietary code. This can limit the ability to add-on tools not created by that vendor such as EMPI, CDR, connectivity gateways, and data quality tools. The proprietary nature of the systems can also present a barrier in moving or upgrading the integration infrastructure as needs change in the future. Look for an IaaS platform that is vendor agnostic.

5. Adds interoperability design and support resources. Today’s interoperability use-cases can be complicated. A healthcare focused IaaS solution partnership will give you resources to help design data requirements to meet specific use-case. Together, the IaaS solution and your organization can architect data flows between internal systems as well as external endpoints such as other EHRs, Health Information Exchange organizations, national networks like Carequality, and other affiliated healthcare organizations. It is overwhelming and nearly impossible for typical healthcare organizations to build-out and provide ongoing support for these major initiatives on their own.

What Does an Integration as a Service Platform Look Like?

Though the interface technology stack and methods of managing data will vary, the below helps illustrate the functional components of an Integration as a Service (IaaS) platform.