EPIC data integration for the operating room

A major hospital in the midwest was struggling to operate efficiently due to siloed data. In a highly regulated industry like healthcare, data integrations require not just a deep knowledge of technology, but also a cross-functional understanding of how hospital departments work together and what rules each must comply with. The hospital wanted to connect patient data from its EPIC electronic health record (EHR) system with its surgery scheduling systems and data systems that track surgical implants. As a stopgap, it was pulling nurses off the floor up to 4 hours each week for manual data entry. Errors in data entry were leading to billing gaps, where many small items used in a procedure were going unbilled since they weren’t captured in the correct system.

FormedAI’s extensive previous work integrating EHRs like EPIC, Cerner, and Meditech with other hospital systems gave us experience with highly controlled data environments, industry standard data exchange formats, and the need for secure messaging protocols and appropriate data mapping between system. Formed AI created an automated integration that fed patient scheduling data into a scheduling platform to seamlessly handle no-shows. Following surgery, a patient’s EHR is automatically updated with a secure HL7 message that records the serial number of an implant from its OR data platform. Billing data from the procedure is passed to the hospital ERP to give finance full visibility of all billable items used in a surgery.