Three developers with Baptist headed north to Wisconsin in March to attend the FHIRWorks 2018 developer conference/hackathon. Tommy Cloar, a software developer/analyst with Baptist Technology Services (BTS) joined Darnell Settles, manager of web marketing, and Eder Causor, digital content strategist with Corporate Communications to present MyProvider.
FHIR stands for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource and is a relatively new specification for exchanging health care data using standard, modern web technologies in a developer friendly way. The Baptist developers attended with the goal to develop MyProvider. “The primary goal was to learn as much as we could about Epic’s FHIR Application Programming Interface (API), resources and web service offerings. To do so, we also had to have an idea for an app, work on it and present our work,” said Tommy.
During the conference, the trio successfully developed a working proof of concept for MyProvider.
Approximately 15 entities and 32-40 developers attended, including 20 to 30 developers from Epic. “We were able to work with the Epic developers as needed,” said Tommy.
And before they left, the three did fit in some play on two slides on the corporate campus, according to Tommy. “One slide was from a second to first floor and one ran from a third to second floor, both in different buildings…in case you are running late, you know.”
What is MyProvider?
MyProvider allows a user to create and maintain a contact list that will easily allow them to contact their provider or other members of their care team. Users will be able to see contact suggestions based on providers they have previously seen, search our existing provider database in Epic using FHIR, or enter providers manually. If users have proxy access to a loved one’s electronic health record, they can also maintain a separate contact list for them in the app. In the future, the user will also have a way, using FHIR, to connect with different databases/APIs to add providers that are not in Epic (non-Baptist providers) but also other types of providers like optometrists and dentists (covering all aspects of a user’s care).
