[jrgoodner]

Jared Goodner here (cofounder of Akido) - We're super excited to see what the HN crowd can do with a RESTful API for hospital data! Check out our first blog post for some very simple examples.

https://www.akidolabs.com/blog/hello-world

[falsestprophet]

What do you think of Apervita.com, which is also a platform for working with EHR?

They seem to want "health authors" (developers/scientists) to use their "authoring environment" (locked in IDE/language... wow) to build "insights" (apps) that are locked into their market.

I don't understand the virtue of that model unless they think that they can achieve a monopoly on a lot of data. Is it possible they can?

[jrgoodner]

Hey @falsestprophet, thanks for reaching out!

I had been introduced to Apervita a little while back, and while I found it intriguing, it didn't solve the problem I was looking to solve. From my perspective, the biggest problem in healthcare right now is the lack of interoperability between systems -- data within a hospital is frankly rather locked up, inaccessible by reasonable means. This holds back a TON of much needed innovation in the space.

If Apertiva's platform is a means for spurring innovation, then I'm all for it. My prediction is that health data access will hold them back, until Akido is in every hospital across the country ;)

[falsestprophet]

I believe they are integrating with hospital systems and standardizing data just like Akido presumably with the goal of getting into every hospital just like you.

I'm sure both Apervita and Akido would love to have a monopoly on the data and hospital network, but it doesn't seem like that is a guaranteed outcome. (So this is perhaps merely a very good business rather than an amazing business.)

But, instead of simply offering an API like you they want developers/scientists/doctors to build on a proprietary platform for a proprietary market on top of their proprietary API.

So they're Akido + Google App Engine + Google Play for health.

These guys raised $18 million, so some serious people believe in the company. But, I just don't understand the virtue of trying to lock all customers into their "Google App Engine + Google Play".

No one in their mind would build a business on that if they could go with a more open alternative, right? And now you are an alternative.

Though I think it would be pretty cool if you guys had an added offering that made it easy for hospitals to buy little apps... um I guess something like Apervita. :)

[hhg2103]

@falsestprophet -- we are right with you on being anti-vendor lock in and supporting open standards. We want to enable healthcare systems to use their data in whatever way they'd like and we think the best way to do that is to keep everything as open and as standards driven as possible.

RE: Hospital apps, couldn't agree more. Keep an eye out!

[andymoe]

I just went to the Dr this morning and the prognosis was their systems are horrible and just getting worse... Apparently the Allscripts program they use gets really really slow about once a week and is generally over capacity.

It was neat that they could pull up some records from a hospital visit from a few years ago but generally it was really painful to watch. On the drive back I was thinking to myself "YC should invest in as many EHR companies as possible." Your service seems very interesting and immediately reminded me of what easypost.com is doing for shipping providers which I also love. We ship out a bit of hardware to go with our software and the shipping APIs are a huge mess too and most existing solutions need tweaked to the point where eventually you will need to do some integration work to get the efficiencies you want. I assume it's the same or worse in the EHR space. Nice work.

[jrgoodner]

Hey @andymoe, thanks for your comment and your kind words!

You're absolutely right that EHR's have a whole host of problems that could be solved by smart app developers! There's a ton of opportunity unlocked by providing safe and developer friendly access to health data.

[jamesalden]

Jared, Glad to see you guys are doing something different in this space! Congratulations.

Will your software allow someone to integrate with Clinics/Hospitals now without have any relationship with them? Is it sufficient to just integrate with your APIs and be able to get our user's health data from the clinics/hospitals you support?

[jrgoodner]

Hey James, that's a great question - the answer is that in order to access data from any health system, you'll need their OK.

Akido does make it much much easier for them to say OK, though :). While the API makes it far easier on developers, the hospital/clinic gets a far more secure means of transmitting data to vendors, as well as very fine grained control over who has access to which data, and detailed logs of every request.