Epic Integration-Pathways to Accessing Data

[Colin Plover]

Hello Helpful Community,

My team and I developed software to help nurses with various operations in hospitals. We are working on integration with Epic now, however, we are limited to what is available in the sandbox. Epic has paused new AppOrchard subscriptions until September. We would like to know how we can develop our code to call or pull patient demographic data associated with specific beds/rooms in the hospital. The software is helpful to nurses by showing them patients in the specific beds/rooms that they are assigned. We know it is possible from people we have spoken with but can not identify how, from the information available in the sandbox, to develop the code to call/pull this information. Do you know how to do this or how we would go about getting the information we need to develop the code to call or pull the information in this way? Is AppOrchard the only way or would a health system partner be able to give us the information necessary?

Thank you!

Best,
Colin

[Colin Plover]

Thank you!!! I so appreciate you taking the time to provide this wonderful and detailed description. It confirms some of what I have been learning (that it will be complicated and that even with access we may need help with custom / complex data extractions) and added to my understanding as well identifying Epid EDI support and Epic's FHIRwalkers group. I am learning that although there is not clear and easy way to get the data that we need, there the data we need with enough problem solving and collaborations with healthcare system resources and potentially Epic support as well. Thank you again for volunteering your time to help a nurse trying to help nurses. 

[changeman]

I'm glad you've found the feedback useful, Colin.  I forgot to clarify that my experience is that of HIT support at an Epic customer/healthcare system, supporting Epic integration among other things.  We have worked with 3rd party integrations using both App Orchard/Market and open.epic, so we have a general idea of both platforms.  Even with the assistance Epic provides for App Orchard/Market developers, we've seen a project or two that underestimated the complexities of Epic data capture workflows, particularly if you work at an organization that likes to customize them...