What A Real Open EHR API Should Accomplish

There’s been a lot of talk in the EHR world about APIs and most of the time they talk about it as an open API. The problem is that there’s been a lot of talk about EHR APIs and not a lot of action. Having an open API is more than just giving a couple people access to some really small subset of your EHR. We need truly open EHR APIs that are more than just a nice press release.

A successful EHR API requires two core elements: Access to EHR Data and a User Base.

The first element is the obvious one and the one that everyone focuses on. An API needs to have access to the data in the EHR. This includes accessing that data for display in an outside application. Plus, it requires that an EHR accept data from an outside application. EHR APIs seem to fall short on both of these areas. Most only give you access to some really small portion of the EHR data. Even fewer let you write any sort of data to the EHR.