Location, Location, Location

The old adage regarding real estate is the top three value considerations are location, location and location. As healthcare transitions into more value-based payment designs, the same adage will hold true for health information technology. Data residing only on a server within a medical practice will likely put that practice not only off any main roads, but will likely marginalize it all together.
We have long recognized this revolution was coming, and that is part of the reason why we have been getting up to speed by initially offering a solution (S.H.S) that I prefer to describe as a “platform as a service” or PAAS. In a nutshell, we allow for medical practices to move their own, individual, unique server from the closet in the back to a virtual server within the Internet "cloud." This appears to be a more practical solution for medical practices than us offering a single software as a service or SAAS. This SAAS approach is most commonly referred to as an application service provider (ASP). However, rarely does a medical practice only want just the single software application that an ASP provides. Almost all clinics need to have an ability to virtually have access to several software applications from different vendors. The PAAS delivers this multi-application capability today, and that is a big reason we are now offering a more robust PAAS rather than a more limited ASP.
The next big step for us in this transition will come later in 2010 when we release our integration toolkit (i.e. SDK/API). It is our intent to make SOAPware as “open-platform” as is reasonably possible. Almost daily, we are approached by end-users, developers and vendors with wonderful solutions that could serve many specialized niches within the SOAPware community. It is our intent to create a SOAPware platform rather than a monolithic application that attempts to provide everything for everyone. This summer, we will have the core system of electronic medical records and billing system in place. About the same time, with the release of the open-platform SDK/API, we intend to create an opportunity for third parties to be able to provide applications. Thus, SOAPware will become more like an iPhone providing the platform on which many others can build applications. To get the ball rolling on our iPhone-like platform, we have had to initially focus on a limited set of third parties (i.e. registries, portals, personal health record systems, etc.). The links to the first generation are being created now. However, we will be eager to see the second and third generation solutions grow rapidly. Why should all practices have to have a choice of only one registry or PHR, etc.?
We are really eager to complete our core, SOAPware Suite within the next few months so that we can more actively engage and facilitate the Clinical Groupware movement.