This document discusses how APIs could improve healthcare management and change the relationship between patients and doctors. It notes that most healthcare spending goes to managing chronic conditions, which is costly when problems become serious crises. APIs could enable continuous remote health monitoring to detect issues early through wearable patches. This could prevent expensive hospital visits and improve outcomes. The document also describes how APIs allow different medical applications and staff to securely collaborate, like at UCSF where they replaced pagers. If APIs make the relationship with doctors easier and less costly, it could help better manage chronic conditions.

1. Let APIs change your
relationship with your doctor

3. • One of the most challenging aspects of modern medicine is managing
the care of the chronically ill. In 2010, according to the US Centers for
Disease Control, 86 percent of all healthcare spending in the US went
towards conditions like heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and obesity;
cancer care alone cost $157 billion. The costs come when these
conditions manifest themselves in crises which require expensive
hospital stays and costly medication. It would be cheaper and easier
to manage these conditions on an ongoing basis, so medical
professionals could detect and solve problems before they became
serious events. This could pre-empt a doctor’s visit or a hospital stay,
saving time and money for the patient and the insurance company.

4. • This is where APIs provide so much promise for healthcare. The
University of Texas – a MuleSoft customer, by the way – has come up
with a novel solution to continuous health monitoring; instead of
having to wear a band or watch, their engineering department has
improved the manufacturing process for a flexible, microthin
wearable patch – like a temporary tattoo – that someone could wear
on their skin to continuously monitor their health statistics. This new
process could make these electronic patches incredibly cheap and
easy to use, and they will be connected to patients’ healthcare
records via an API.

5. • APIs could revolutionize how medical professionals connect with their
patients, partners, and colleagues; they have already shown a great deal of
promise in healthcare settings. One particularly interesting use of APIs is
CareWeb Messenger, an innovative approach to collaboration for medical
staff at the University of California, San Francisco. This communications
solution for UCSF’s medical professionals uses the Salesforce 1 platform to
enable communication between UCSF Medical Center staff and MuleSoft’s
Anypoint Platform, seamlessly connecting on-premise, cloud and mobile
applications in a highly available and HIPAA-compliant environment. Prior
to CareWeb Messenger, UCSF staff were using pagers to communicate with
one another; this solution allows for staff to collaborate using mobile
devices and cloud-based SaaS applications, lowering costs and improving
medical outcomes.

6. • McKinsey has argued that we are on the cusp of a big-data revolution
in healthcare, one that could not only change the patient’s
relationship with their doctors, but could accelerate value and
innovation as well. Technology has the potential to make our
relationship with medical professionals easier, more pleasant, and
less of a financial burden.

7. • If you’re interested in more about how APIs could impact healthcare,
check out this webinar on APIs and the healthcare industry or our
whitepaper on the Connected Hospital. Technology has already made
huge strides in healthcare – if APIs could deepen the relationship and
build trust between patients and their medical professionals, it could
make a big difference in managing difficult chronic conditions.