With the emergence of open platforms and application programming interfaces (APIs), partnerships between traditional and non-traditional health information technology developers are likely to become more common. Considering that healthcare has been historically unkind to unproven entries into the industry, these newcomers will have to lean on their more established partners to build the necessary trust with a unique set of consumers in order to be successful.
Such is the case of Box and CareCloud, which recently announced a partnership aimed at improving patient engagement by using cloud services the former has been successful delivering to consumers and enterprises.
“We know and you know that in the coming year or two a physician’s ability to communicate with patients, to allow them access to certain information is going to be paramount to them, not only adhering to Stage 2 Meaningful Use but also being able to interact on a day-to-day basis as part of their workflow,” says John Hallock, Vice President of Corporate Communications at CareCloud. “This is one step in that direction.”
From the cloud-based EHR provider’s perspective, the partnership illustrates a new reality as well as a different take on best-of-breed in health IT.
“To think that CareCloud can do it all (and there are a lot of vendors in the healthcare IT space that have this mentality),” continues Hallock, “We are very good at what we do and there are others in other parts of industries that can do things maybe faster or better or have experiences we don’t have. This was a clear case of that.”
From the perspective of Box, it’s the right time for an innovator to come into healthcare and address the problem of data fluidity and exchange.
“We’re finally getting to a place where we’re getting out of paper and moving into a digital trend,” claims Missy Krasner, Advisor for the Healthcare Vertical at Box. “The history, though, has still been that the entire industry when it has moved off paper has moved to on-premise systems that are essentially all legacy software.”
What was originally designed to bring healthcare into the digital age actually became an obstacle for moving it forward still, and with it the painful realization that a solution to the problem requires additional investments.
“How vendors make a lot of money in healthcare is they rely on point-to-point integration, within the enterprise and across the enterprise,” says Krasner. “It becomes extremely clunky and very costly to update these systems and/or expose point-to-point integrations from one to the other so that data can be transferred.”
What CareCloud and Box are banking on is the ability of the cloud to remove these barriers and eliminate much of the cost of breaking down silos of patient data. However, all enthusiasm aside, how will physicians respond? Will they be comfortable with the move?
According to Carlos Sesin, MD, of Vanguard Rheumatology Partners in Miami Beach, the answers to those questions depend on a provider’s relationship with his EHR vendor.
While Sesin is now a user of a cloud-based system, his journey to the cloud is the culmination of nearly ten years of working with locally- and another remotely-hosted EHRs and varying levels of distrust about storing his patients’ data outside the four walls of his group practice.
“Initially, when I first started doing this, my feeling was that I wanted to be in control of everything,” the rheumatologist reveals. “At this point, I think that anything that is anything other than a cloud-based system is passé, anachronistic, a dinosaur. This is the way that it’s moving and I embrace it. I feel very comfortable with it.”
The three-time EHR adopter and current CareCloud user thinks positively of the CareCloud-Box partnership but wouldn’t know what his response would be if either of his previous vendors made a similar move.
“The word trust is very important,” he explains. “I’ve had experiences that have unfortunately betrayed that trust. It has to be done with vendor-partner so to speak that you feel comfortable with and that you’ve been through some thick and thin times with and have pulled through for you. My prior experience was dismal.”
In the end, building confidence in the cloud and an open approach to health IT will likely come down to EHR and health IT companies first establishing a track record that warrants their healthcare customers investing their cash as well as their trust.source
