1. Chip Ach
Senior Architect, More Disruption Please
Healthcare Refactored
May 14, 2014

2. „ “Senior Architect, More Disruption Please”
sounds like a cool title, but what is More
Disruption Please (MDP)?
„ Who do you partner with? Why? How?
„ How does R&D guide the path of openness?
„ What comes next?
2
Agenda

3. Joy’s Law
3
“ ”
No matter who you are, most of the
smartest people work for someone else.
„ We can’t build fast enough for
our clients
„ We need to offer more services
than we can possibly build
„ We can go to market with
richer tools and solutions if we
don’t need to build and own
everything
Product Builder MDP (Open Network)
„ athenaNet: 52,000+
providers, 40+ million
patient records
„ Provide connectivity to the
athenaNet core
„ Open our platform to an
array of innovative solutions
for our client base

4. 4

5. 5
The 2013 Approach To Partnerships
Identify Capability Areas
Scheduling Digital Check-In
• Expose providers’
schedules, building on
athenaCommunicator
• Allow real-time scheduling
• Increase schedule density
and decrease no-shows
• Patient self-service
• We don’t say “kiosk”
• Increase patient payments
• Reduce administrative
burden on all staff
• Increase patient
satisfaction

6. 6
The 2013 Approach To Partnerships
Find Partners
Find someone great Have more than one
Identify Capability Areas
Scheduling Digital Check-In
• We wanted to be careful
• But the timing wasn’t right for
one company.
• Having more than one partner
means flexibility.
• It also means managing
multiple relationships with
different scope.
• We will measure
performance.
Our first… iTriage

7. 7
The 2013 Approach To Partnerships
Build APIs
Infrastructure and approach More work than you think
Find Partners
Find someone great Have more than one
Identify Capability Areas
Scheduling Digital Check-In
• Build our side once
• We didn’t think traditional
HL7 was enough.
• You need to have the
underlying infrastructure to
create an API.
• Legacy code
• Functionality gaps between
what your partner needs
and you have (and think
your partner needs)
• There is a lot to expose

8. 8
The 2013 Approach To Partnerships
Beta Test
1. Find Clients 2. Iterate 3. Repeat
Build APIs
RESTful, JSON More work than you think
Find Partners
Find someone great Have more than one
Identify Capability Areas
Scheduling Digital Check-In
• The right clients
• High touch setup
• Feedback givers
• No, we didn’t get
it 100% right
• Feedback from
everyone
• No, we still didn’t
get it 100% right

9. 9
The 2013 Approach To Partnerships
Marketplace Launch with 20+ Partners
https://athenahealth.com/marketplace
Beta Test
1. Find Clients 2. Iterate 3. Repeat
Build APIs
RESTful, JSON More work than you think
Find Partners
Find someone great Have more than one
Identify Capability Areas
Scheduling Digital Check-In

10. 10
A new approach in 2014…
If you build it, they will come.

11. „ Broad coverage of functional areas
„ We’re building more clinically-focused API calls
„ Cover capability areas to cover product gaps and foster innovation
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Taking the long view in 2014
Clinical Decision
Support?
Med Adherence?
Patient
Engagement?
Device Integration?

12. „ Some pieces of the application aren’t ready to be exposed via the API
to the outside world. Who does the work to expose them?
„ Quality over quantity of partners? Is a diverse set of choices
important? Ratings? Are we physicians most trusted service? (“Our
mission is to be medical care givers’ most trusted service, helping them
do well, doing the right thing.”)
„ How open? How quickly?
„ Multiple players involved has a downside. Who is responsible when
something goes wrong? Who configures what?
„ Partner management is real work.
• Do we tier partners?
• Do we let anyone in to see what we’re doing?
• How should we vet partners?
12
All the boring hard questionsAll the important hard questions

13. Questions?
13