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Re:Putting healthcare in hackers' hands by aantix on Tuesday February 26, 2013 @01:29PM (#5287388)
This is pretty amazing, not sure why it's not getting more attention.

The patient records (MRI, CT scan images, doctor writeups) are probably a lot harder to standardize I'm assuming?

That seems to be the missing piece from this API. Otherwise, great job you guys.. Open up the industry!

Re:Putting healthcare in hackers' hands by ef4 on Tuesday February 26, 2013 @01:55PM (#5287580)
It's true that the patient records use disparate standards, and that it's not trivial to convert them. But even when you have systems that adhere to the various existing data exchange standards, there are deeper structural reasons that organizations are hesitant to exchange data.

Their existing software often does a bad job of identifying the provenance of information or filtering out noisy irrelevant information, so unless they can be assured that everyone else is following the same policies around how things are documented and categorized, they're unwilling to mix a bunch of "outside" data with their own.

They also see little incentive to invest effort in opening up their own data to others, because it costs real money and doesn't really benefit them. This is where a good startup business could make a difference -- by doing the data exporting work "for free" in exchange for the ability to sell access to it.

Re:Putting healthcare in hackers' hands by kategleason on Tuesday February 26, 2013 @01:34PM (#5287418)
Thank you. One step at a time. We're focused on winning as the platform where all US healthcare eligibility information is passed to prove that it can be normalized and done fast. Then we will move on to help hackers take over the whole healthcare transactional world including clinical, imaging, and pharma data :) Less talk, more do!