CData tackles health data connectivity A s health care applications and devices grow, and as more ways to integrate and collect data from those different systems grow, industry initiatives such as Fast Health care Interoperability Resources (FHIR) have allowed data connectivity to make it easier for companies to access health data securely. And, it has been adopted by the industry in a big way. CData, a connectivity company, has expanded its presence in the health care space because of its ability to map and integrate Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) processes and integrate them with databases and other back-end applications. Among its clients is Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, that state’s largest health insurance company with 3.2 million members. The company was facing a tight deadline to meet new data interoperability standards and called on CData to help rework their data ingestion framework to support the FHIR EDI file format. “When we get this new encounter
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data from our partners like LabCorp and HearUSA, that is coming in the EDI format,” said Rama Kakarala, data services manager at Horizon. “We had a technical gap we needed to close. The EDI 837 file format is very complex, so very few SMEs across the company can understand the entire EDI layout. That’s why we were looking for a tool that could easily do the job.” Horizon’s data framework had been built to support JSON or CSV formats, and it chose CData’s ArcESB to create a system that could automate ingestion and file translation. ArcESB helps companies process data that they normally get in other formats, and convert that data into FHIR files. With the tool, Horizon was able in six weeks to map out what it needed and implement a solution that allowed them to receive EDI 837 format files and integrate that data with their internal CSV files to automatically create an explanation of benefits document. It also allowed them to send newly formatted FHIR documents to an outside interoperability partner.
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Mike Albritton, senior vice president, cloud, at CData, said the company is working to build more FHIR connectors, to unlock the connectivity to FHIR. CData’s ArcESB, he said, is used in a number of different health care areas. “We work with insurance companies, where our Arc product is used for transactional purposes to process things like claims, EDI, and HIPAA documents, We work with hospitals to process very similar transactional EDI and HIPAA x12 documents. We work with drug companies that use our products for processing data for regulatory processes, security analysis, and alerting for other types of data integration processes that they have. We also work with companies that connect to the FDA,” which requires documents to be submitted through an electronic gateway that uses a particular protocol, he said. CData connectors are used in all types of health care companies for the ability to unlock siloed data, connect to all types of applications as well as NoSQL databases. :
