Medcurio

Today, we’re chatting about Medcurio and how it’s used at your company. Before we begin, could you give a brief overview of the company and your role there?

I lead the Platform Services team for a nonprofit healthcare organization. My team includes several application development groups focused on digital technologies that are aligned with our strategic investments. Our work centers on interoperability using APIs, enhancing mobility, and developing a new patient-facing mobile application. We also manage a low-code platform to empower our citizen developer community, along with technologies that assist our contact centers and support CRM platforms for our marketing teams.

What was the need that drove you to look for a product like Medcurio?

We needed to expedite digital integrations and provide custom experiences for our clients more efficiently than we were able to at the time. Despite our strategic relationship with a major EMR vendor and their API capabilities, we encountered challenges with swift integration and customization. This situation underscored the importance of becoming an API-first organization and led us to explore products in the market to enhance our interoperability.

We have a team developing applications for both patients and providers, but the out-of-the-box APIs from our EMR weren’t meeting our requirements. Recognizing the demand for digital technologies that deliver tailored experiences and immediate, relevant information, we had to find a way to quickly iterate and construct custom solutions to maintain our value proposition for consumers and clinicians.

How did you find the onboarding and setup process?

Once we decided to go with Medcurio and their VennU application, we worked very closely with the Medcurio team to determine the best architecture for our goals. They worked with us step by step throughout the implementation, ensuring seamless integration with our existing EMR and the various non-production environments. This led to a successful launch in our production environment.

At a high level, how did you identify your needs, and how did Medcurio work with you in order to figure out where they could effectively plug in?

We aimed for maximum flexibility in building and deploying custom experiences in a timely fashion. In collaboration with the architecture team and the Medcurio CTO, we explored several options. We chose a solution involving a near real-time copy of our EMR data integrated with the VennU application from Medcurio. This setup provides independent access to a continuous data feed from our EMR. Despite higher costs and a longer initial setup time for this architecture, our solution allowed us to take control of our future in building and managing new capabilities through APIs through the VennU application that we now offer to our clients.

What are your current use cases for the product?

We’ve been able to design and deploy solutions to a wide range of use cases. We enhance HL7 feeds and API calls from our EMR system by adding custom information that our clients need. We’ve also built new functionality to leverage near real-time data from our EMR into VennU for immediate insights into various applications.

Currently, we’re developing APIs on VennU to feed into a new messaging platform for patient communication. It’s essential for these messages to be timely, which is why we’re utilizing VennU’s strengths to build streamlined queries that are highly responsive, highly scalable, and perfect for ingestion into our new notification platform.

Additionally, we’ve used VennU to create custom APIs for patient engagement features in our mobile app. It also supports our marketing efforts by supplementing data for a comprehensive view of our consumers, and it aids our data science team by providing extra context for machine learning models to generate actionable insights.

How would you summarize the most valuable capabilities that Medcurio offers for your organization?

On the people front, the depth of the Medcurio team’s expertise in Caché and IRIS database management is impressive. Their skill set is specialized, vital for building custom queries for the VennU application. Their collaborative approach in refining our API design and feedback process adds significant value, alongside exploring potential future use cases for VennU.

Looking at the product, VennU offers a low-code platform that’s user friendly for various roles within our healthcare company, from engineers to business analysts. This ease of use facilitates rapid adoption and eliminates the need for extensive training, allowing quick competency in query building and deployment.

Process-wise, we’ve seamlessly integrated Medcurio’s release upgrades into our routine. Their assistance in regression testing production APIs helps minimize our resource allocation and ensures high-quality outputs and faster delivery of services, and it mitigates risks associated with API changes. Medcurio’s support essentially extends our in-house team’s capabilities.

How reliable is the platform?

Like with any software, there can be occasional bugs, but Medcurio’s response to issues is prompt and efficient. They work closely with us to resolve any problems quickly, demonstrating a commitment to maintaining a quality product. They are also proactive in communicating about and addressing any platform degradation, similar to other industry-leading CRM and Agile workflow management tools.

How would you characterize the documentation and the developer experience?

Initially, the documentation was thin, as the company was in its early stages and we were among their first customers. However, they have since expanded their team and improved their resources. They now provide comprehensive release notes and high-quality training materials. To facilitate the adoption of the VennU application within our organization, we distribute Medcurio’s materials, which are detailed enough to acclimate new team members and enable effective use of the platform.

Do you have any advice for someone who has recently purchased VennU and is deciding how they’re going to be using the product?

It’s important to start by identifying the value you’re seeking and the specific problem you need to address. In our case, we needed to accelerate the development of custom experiences, and VennU delivered that flexibility for us. You’ll need to evaluate whether VennU aligns with the challenges your organization aims to tackle. Engaging in a direct dialogue with Medcurio’s leadership can be beneficial—they can guide you on whether their solution is suitable for your needs or if there are better alternatives.

You’ll want to sit down with the Medcurio team to explore the platform architecture and understand the potential costs, time to market, and other implications, especially if you’re considering a tightly coupled implementation with existing infrastructure. Consider who your audience is and how they will use the system, and assess your team’s capacity and expertise in building, maintaining, and deploying the platform.

Evaluate your need for a low-code product and how well you know the data platform with which it will integrate.

How did the integration process go?

We avoided integration pain points by setting up our own instance of VennU, separate from our existing EMR infrastructure. This architectural decision was driven by our goal to deliver new capabilities quickly without impacting our EMR installation. Our choice to separate the systems may have had higher costs up front, but I’m confident it resulted in fewer integration issues,and insulated our production EMR from any growing pains as we scale usage of VennU.

Looking back, do you feel like your team made the correct decision in moving forward with Medcurio?

I believe we did. I can’t speak for the assessments of other products, as that was done by my predecessors, but in terms of people, process, and product, Medcurio and their VennU application stands out. The strategic relationship with Medcurio is promising, and I expect it to strengthen over time. They’ve enabled us to develop custom solutions that facilitate digital integrations more efficiently. Previously, we had to wait and hope our vendor would prioritize our requests for new capabilities. Now, with VennU, this isn’t an issue. We can swiftly create APIs and extract data, enhancing our ability to deliver custom experiences. This tool has transformed our operational capabilities, and we plan to continue growing our use of the platform by developing more APIs.

Are there any potential areas of growth that you see?

The Medcurio Team has been great at listening to our needs and partnering to deliver. One feature which we’ve discussed for some time is supporting write back capabilities to our EMR. We currently face the challenge of maintaining multiple sources of truth due to our architecture. Ideally, we would have the ability to quickly create APIs that allow us to not only read, but write back to our EMR. We’re in discussions with the Medcurio team to explore safe use cases for this kind of integration, but until it is supported we are limited to “read only” experiences.