Hospitals, imaging centers, laboratories, and clinics are all faced with the demand of providing electronic interfaces at unprecedented rates. The rising demand is due to the operational objective of streamlining workflow and the revenue objective of efficiently establishing productive relationships with referring physicians.

Interfacing applications is an essential ingredient to achieving both objectives. Today, there are two primary approaches to interfacing:

1. Create point-to-point interfaces with different application vendors to connect to internal applications or providers and their applications
2. Select an interface engine solution that can broker communication of patient data between various internal applications and providers and their applications

Determining the most effective approach for healthcare integration has a long term impact on an organization’s physician outreach programs, workflow efficiencies, operational costs, and overall client support.