One last point to make. Not only do public APIs enable third parties to build applications that interoperate with your system, making your product more valuable to your customers, but it also makes pretty good business sense. Sure, healthcare IT vendors can charge $50K per custom interface, but, for “…some of the brightest stars of tech: Amazon, Apple, Google, SalesForce, and Facebook…a significant source of their revenue comes from APIs… Salesforce does 300 million transactions a day just in API calls, about half their more than 600 million/day total transaction volume.”
Public APIs are good for innovation, good for vendors’ bottom lines, and, the reason that ultimately should trump all others, they are good for the patient.
Don Rosenthal is founder and CTO of Allocade, a company specializing in AI software to optimize hospital patient flow. This post first appeared on his blog, THITSE, covering the intersection of technology, healthcare IT and space exploration. Don was part of the original team that developed the scheduling system for the Hubble Space Telescope and later created and ran the artificial intelligence application group at NASA Ames Research Center.You can follow him on Twitter @donrosenthal.