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The power of innovation: How developers shape the health IT landscape

When I first joined Allscripts, no one could have prepared me for how much healthcare technology would change over the course of 20 years. In 2002, we were simply software developers racing to deliver feature after feature to compete for the growing number of physician practices and hospitals who wanted to incorporate technology into their daily workflows. Everything was about enhancing the functionality built into the electronic health record (EHR) to gain new clients and market share. In 2010, clients began asking about interoperability; specifically, how could they send data from all their different point-of-care devices directly into a patient’s chart and how could they get their various solutions to share information with each other.

Allscripts started building out APIs in 2007, first to connect our own ever-growing ecosystem of applications, but later to help our third-party device vendors connect to our EHRs as well. We started providing instructions to help third parties use the APIs we built and witnessed some great outcomes when disparate technologies started working together. Based on this early positive feedback and after listening to the challenges faced by our clients, we launched the first version of our Allscripts Developer Program in 2010, followed shortly by the industry’s first online Application Store, to enable clients to browse available solutions and connect with developers to learn more.

In 2010, we were just beginning to consider how much of our product roadmap would be consumed by federal and state regulations—that was still before Meaningful Use, Cures Act obligations and other regulatory requirements. Fast forward to today and it’s amazing to see the explosion of investment and innovation brought about (in part) by the global pandemic. Health technology startups are getting funding at extraordinary levels and interoperability is at the heart of the solutions we see coming to market. The challenge remains—how do we ensure all these new technologies work well together, reduce burden on the providers, patients and other users of these systems and ultimately deliver more value as a connected ecosystem than they could as separate systems working independently?

In addition to ensuring that the technical infrastructure exists to support interoperability, we learned over the years how important it is for clients to have an easy way to find information about connected solutions. With so many new products coming to market, we have been busier than ever working with companies to connect with Allscripts solutions. We recognized that we needed to refresh the online experience for clients to ensure they had access to information about all the great applications and devices that are now certified for use with Allscripts.

We are excited to announce that the Allscripts Application Store has been relaunched as the Allscripts App Expo—and the enhancements are more than just the name. The Allscripts App Expo offers the same benefits as the original but now includes a growing number of new applications, more visibility into solutions integrated with FHIR and improved filter/search capabilities to assist our international clients in finding solutions available in specific markets. As our certification and testing team continues to work with new innovators, we’ll continue to add to the portfolio of solutions that are available on the Allscripts App Expo, and we encourage you to visit often. Learn more here.

We’re proud to work with a wide variety of applications that can help our clients reach their potential by offering services such as better patient data management, help transitioning to value-based care, reducing time spent charting, eliminating onsite fax services and so much more. We’re constantly evaluating new trends and seeking out innovators to ensure that we continue to provide our clients solutions that help them solve not just the challenges of today, but those they will encounter as our industry continues to evolve over the next 10 and 20 years. We’re still focused on delivering great features in all of our Allscripts solutions and we know that our ecosystem of innovators in the Allscripts Developer Program is an important part of ensuring that our clients have the ability to customize and enhance these solutions as well. We hope you enjoy the changes we’ve introduced to make it easier than ever to find integrated solutions on our new Allscripts App Expo.

If you are interested in joining the Allscripts Developer Program, you can learn more about our application process here.

To learn more about our top apps of 2021, check out our recent eMagazine here.

If you are attending the HIMSS 2022 conference, please stop by booth 1279 to learn more about integration opportunities and our new App Expo.

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