Healthcare is not lacking in data; it is lacking in insights. According to the World Economic Forum, hospitals produce a staggering 50 petabytes of data each year. But how much of that data is used? Unfortunately, most of it remains unusable because the systems storing it speak different “data languages.”
Systems like Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), and Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) all format and store data in unique ways. This lack of standardization makes data exchange, analysis, and interpretation incredibly difficult, leading to discrepancies, misinterpretations, and ultimately, compromised patient care.
That is where Onyx Health comes in! Their healthcare data interoperability platform, OnyxOS, simplifies the way health data is connected and shared, regardless of where or how it is stored. OnyxOS is built on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards. This global standard of data exchange in healthcare solves the interoperability challenge by ensuring that different systems “speak the same language.”
OnyxOS delivers FHIR-based APIs, seamlessly translating data from any healthcare application into a standardized FHIR format. This format can then be securely accessed and used by various applications (including EHRs) within the client organization, partner organizations such as payers, patients, and even federal and state government agencies.
“Implementing FHIR solutions can be complex,” notes Susheel Ladwa, CEO of Onyx Health. “It involves multiple steps from the conversion of data to FHIR, managing consent, sharing the data through an API, and management of a developer ecosystem. OnyxOS handles all these complexities, ensuring your entire enterprise is FHIR-enabled within 10 to 14 weeks.”
He further adds, “Think of OnyxOS as the operating system for healthcare 2.0 which will be extremely interoperable. In a mobile-first world, banking is already in your pocket, entertainment is already in your pocket, you can book travel and hotels in a few taps, healthcare is moving into a mobile-first world and OnyxOS will accelerate the trend by empowering patients with their data by making healthcare boundaryless.”
Getting Organizations FHIR-Enabled
OnyxOS is designed to offer FHIR-based interoperability to health payers, clinicians, researchers, labs, and anyone needing to securely access and share health data. Currently, major BlueCross BlueShield affiliate plans, along with numerous regional health plans and HIEs, rely on OnyxOS. During the onboarding process, Onyx Health educates clients on everything FHIR and the quickest way to become FHIR-enabled.
Onyx Health dedicates a few weeks to data discovery and sets up an OnyxOS instance in the Microsoft Azure cloud for the client, all managed by Onyx’s operations experts. Following this phase, Onyx Health’s team collaborates closely with clients to obtain different data formats and internally map that data to HL7’s FHIR standard, making it accessible as an API for sharing with various stakeholders.
With OnyxOS, patients, physicians, and payers gain access to a longitudinal view of healthcare data that is securely accessible on the go. This allows patients to easily access their claims, and clinical and pharmacy information on their preferred device. Physicians can identify care gaps to provide personalized care, while payers can detect risks, authorize care, and develop health plans to improve the onboarding experience of new Health Plan members and streamline their care.
By implementing OnyxOS, clients can easily comply with data-sharing regulations from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Onyx provides health plans out of the box to comply with the Patient Access Final (CMS-9115-F) Rule and the Prior Authorization (CMS-0057-F) Rule that enables electronic prior authorization, payer-to-payer data exchange, and provider access API. The platform is scalable to other high-value use cases like clinical data acquisition, cost transparency, quality reporting, and more.
Building the Ecosystem of Healthcare Apps
OnyxOS clients receive an App Store out-of-the-box, featuring healthcare apps categorized into three groups: for patients, providers, and payers, offering a range of services on top of available healthcare data. Patient apps, downloaded by patients, grant access to their past and present healthcare data, including diagnostics records, prescriptions, and insurance payments, empowering them to make informed healthcare decisions.
Provider apps enable physicians to access patients’ complete healthcare records, facilitating better care provision by providing information on prior authorization from insurers. This eliminates the need to wait to determine a patient’s eligibility for care.
Payer apps allow payers to ascertain if prior authorization is required and identify the necessary test results and documentation in real time. Furthermore, payers can issue digital insurance cards to their members, which can be directly loaded into their smartphone wallet. “It’s amazing that we have a digital wallet, but we don’t have a digital insurance card. We are changing that, and we are the first ones to have a digital insurance card app today.”
In addition to these capabilities, clients gain access to several other out-of-the-box apps focused on payer-to-provider collaboration, clinical data acquisition, patient data sharing, and more. Moreover, Onyx Health enables other developers to build apps on OnyxOS, akin to the Apple and Android platforms. Data is made available to developers to build apps they want. The company aims to be that operating system on which everybody else can build. “As a result, the possibility for patients, physicians, and payers to find the app they want is limitless,” declares Ladwa.
Onyx Health: Leading the Way
Onyx Health’s parent company, NewWave, built the Blue Button 2.0 API for CMS, which is the largest FHIR implementation globally, supporting over 53 million Americans. Mark Scrimshire, Onyx Health’s chief interoperability officer and a pivotal member of the company’s leadership team, formulated the overall design of the Blue Button 2.0 API during his tenure at CMS. The Onyx team collaborated with Microsoft to develop OnyxOS, leveraging Microsoft’s state-of-the-art technology “As a result, Onyx, with the OnyxOS platform, is better positioned than any other company in the country to ensure organizations, large and small, comply with CMS and ONC healthcare data interoperability mandates,” states Ladwa.
The success of OnyxOS is attributed to the thought leadership that the company brings to the FHIR space. The OnyxOS team is establishing specifications that the industry will adopt. “Every hour that we spend on OnyxOS contributes to moving healthcare to an interoperable world making healthcare better for all,” concludes Ladwa.
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