Today in health, it. What I hate about social media. And really what it's going to be. Isn't an epic integration discussion. My name is bill Russell. I'm the former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this weak health set of channels and events dedicated to transform health care. One connection at a time. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders.

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We want you to mentor someone, share this podcast with a friend or colleague. You said it's foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you. And the industry they can scribe wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. What I hate about social media. What I hate about social media is it gives people a soap box, a platform, and you can stir people up.

And in some cases it's warranted and other cases. It may or may not be warranted. Stephen char lap, M D MBA wrote this on LinkedIn yesterday. I an open letter to Judy Faulkner. CEO of epic. Dear Judy, as a healthcare professional, I've always admired the success of epic systems and the impact that this had on countless lives.

Your legacy has been submitted and I respectfully declare hall hail to the chief. Today, I'm writing on behalf of soap health, a startup with the potential to change lives for the better. After losing a brother to a missed diagnosis, I've spent the last nine years building a solution that will spare others and their families from the same feet. Fantastic. It really is fantastic.

However, epic is indirectly or directly blocking our efforts. Although soap has joined your vendor services group. And paid required fees. Every health system approached that uses epic, says that the integration needed to achieve full benefit and value from soaps application. I will be difficult to achieve. Without epics integration, the millions of lives, so can help we'll miss out. I know someone like you, who has been in healthcare for 35 years has not forgotten the people that are at the core of healthcare.

Please let them, let me help them by improving early disease detection and diagnosis. Not for my sake, but for theirs, let's ask healthcare too. A let's take health care to a better place together. Thank you for your consideration respectfully, Steve. Okay. And then you have the normal things that you have in a story like this. And you have people calling for the FTC to investigate.

You have people calling for, all sorts of things. Epic actually responded to this post to their credit, by the way. I said hi, Steve. You don't need our approval to connect to provider organizations that use epic. If an organization would like to work with you. Your app can connect directly to their system.

Using the catalog of APIs and interfaces available on open.epic.com. You are indeed enrolled. In vendor services, but the team hasn't heard from you yet, Justin, from our vendor services team reached out to you this morning to schedule a call. Stephen responded. Epic. Thank you for responding. Yes. Justin reached out and I responded. We're not asking for approval.

We're asking for support to reassure potential customers that epic is on board with enabling integration of so pals patented, clinically validated and unique. Time-saving. Money-making an outcome, improving applications. Thank you for your consideration.

All right. That's probably all the comments I'm going to read an S there's a lot of them, as you would imagine. And people are like saying, Hey, try this application, try this way of integrating, try this wave of integrating or this third party, all this other stuff. Here's the thing. As I'm reading this. The. This is so jump the gun here.

Here's what, here's how I read this post. Essentially. They have a great tool that they've developed over the course of nine years. And that tool needs integration into epic for whatever reason, it either needs. Integration to collect data. To put data back into the EHR, which is problematic in and of itself. In most cases and or it needs. Integration into the workflow.

So that's likely what it needs. Getting data out, getting data in or integration into the workflow. And epic has a set of API APIs to enable that to a certain level, by the way. And a lot of organizations work through those APIs to get into that to a certain level. If I read this correctly. Essentially what's happening is soap.

So pals is going out to clients. And they're talking to them. And essentially those clients were saying the luck. If you're not completely integrated in one way, shape or form. Then, we're not interested in your application because quite frankly, There are hundreds of applications and we're seeing all sorts of, and I know there's patents involved here and that kind of stuff, but we're seeing all sorts of applications that are using AI. To create. To create a perfect soap note. And now I see this as doing patient data collection and risks. Symptom assessment.

But again, all these things are integrated into other tools. Maybe not as perfectly as it is to this one, but there are a whole bunch of other tools that are out there. And so while this is the center of Stephen's world. So pals is a, is at the center of his world and he is pushing it. And for good reason since he has a family experience around this. It doesn't necessarily constitute a, an application. That health systems need to integrate and need to run with. And he also needs to align this with their business model.

How does this align with their business model? He's talking about, oh, it's going to save lives and do all these things, but does it align. Is there a path to saying, look, it will save this many lives. We've done a study. We've done all these sex. I understand. I, my heart goes out to Steven and what he's trying to do here. And it is very difficult to do a health tech startup.

That's why so many of them fail. That's why so many of them struggle to get funding these days is because it is very difficult. This is a hard road, especially selling into healthcare providers who have a thousand priorities. But at the end of the day, shooting off this note. W with what looks like. The work hasn't been done,

it doesn't look like that. The, found that enabling client who's willing to work with them. Who's willing to take the time to sponsor them into epic and to get the thing integrated that work hasn't been done. If that work has been done. Then we would be having a different conversation at this point.

And so my pushback to Steven. Dr Charlot would be do that work, find a CTO and find it enabling client and get the work done. And there's a lot of health, a lot of applications that have gone this path and have gotten that enabling client or one, two or three. A lot of them have to give up some ownership or that kind of stuff, or in terms of an investment and that kind of stuff.

This is a hard road. Don't get me wrong. And there's things that are a problem with it. But at the end of the day, if you're truly doing something that's different and unique, And and it has this kind of potential, then you have to take it to the next level. You have to start to do the work with that enabling client with that. With that series of APIs.

Now, if you get stuck, Gosh, ring me up again. Because I'll be your biggest fan. I will trumpet it from the rooftops. That, that, the EHR provider is. Either standing in the way of you integrating in some way. But I think it's Quite frankly. Th to say epic is directly or indirectly. Blocking our efforts, I think is. I mean it's reactionary at best. It's It's inflammatory at worst. And not not helpful quite frankly.

And and then you have all these health tech startups who are sitting here, who just want to say, Hey, this is really hard. This is really hard. This real hard. And it is really hard if you're thinking of doing a health tech startup. And you want a reality check? It's really hard. Very few of them make it. And even the established players struggled to continue to make it. Nobody promised this would be an easy road. It's not really Epic's job to make sure that all of them work, they are create.

They've created a path. To work, they've responded to this. Post, which they didn't have to do. They have a group of people that helps. Organizations like this to integrate into the data, into the workflow. And so I'm sure it's not perfect. But understand when you head down this path. That's what you're signing up for.

So anyway, that's. That's why I hate social media because immediately people read it and they read the headline and they go, yes. The big, bad evil needs empire needs to be taken down. Without truly understanding what it takes to do this integration. I'm not saying that like I'm not an epic apologist by any stretch of the imagination. I believe there have been cases.

I've been a part of some cases we're getting data from them. Two other health systems has been very hard getting data from them to other EHR has been hard. If you're within the epic world, they share data really well. But outside of epic, they, they adhere to the rules, but that's about all they will do is adhere to the rules. They believe that an epic world is a better world. And fundamentally think that every health system should be on epic. And quite frankly, if you believe in your product, You should probably have that mindset as well. But I don't think it's the right mindset. For epic, given the market share that they have today, I think they. Should broaden that mindset to helping even those other EHR to be Better. Along the way, and I know it's a weird world where you're saying you should help your competitors, but this is healthcare after all and adherence to the letter of law. Is probably not what we're looking for from a leader like epic.

We're looking for them to go above and beyond wherever possible. But. That's a, that's it, that's why social media just bugs me from time to time. And it's also a warning to those who are heading out into his health tech world and wanting epic to stand up and stand next to them and say, yes, this is the best thing since sliced bread.

You may or may not be the best thing since sliced bread. I can't tell you how many vendors I've been with that have said, I can't believe this house is not going to do this. This thing will do this and this. And then I talked to the CIO and they go, we already have. Something that does 70% of that. And they haven't taken the time to really understand the market they're in.

They have taken the time to understand their competitive landscape and all the things that are in it. And and on one side they think they're negligent at the health system because they're not going down the path with their product. And on the other side, you have to the health system going.

Yeah, no, they're absolutely right. It's necessary. And we're already doing it. So anyway. A lot of different sides to these stories as we move forward, but that's all for today. Don't forget, share this podcast with a friend or colleague and keep the conversation going. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. Notable service now, enterprise health parlance, certified health and Panda 📍 health.

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