In case it is of interest I thought I’d let you know about a new API for HealthPathways integration.
Every DHB in New Zealand has now adopted HealthPathways with the exception of Hawke’s Bay. For anyone who is not familiar with HealthPathways you can find out more at the HealthPathways Community website.
We have just launched our first HealthPathways API, to enable better integration of pathways into clinical workflows. The Pathway Link API lets clinicians jump straight to the relevant pathway from other clinical applications - e.g. condition-specific e-referral forms, problem lists, or diagnosis fields. We’ve assigned SNOMED codes to all pathways to enable this interoperability.
If you are interested in knowing more about the API take a look at the HealthPathways API Documentation. I’m very conscious that integrations of this kind need to be discreet and can be annoying if they’re “in your face” so you’ll see in the API documentation we’ve included some user experience guidelines for implementers to keep it unobtrusive. If you have any feedback on any of this we’d love to hear it - hit the round feedback button at bottom right on the documentation site.
As with any integration of course “it takes two to tango” and vendors of clinical applications will need to be persuaded by their audience that the integration is of value. Our first integration is with Sense Medical’sapplication Cortex which is used by clinicians in Christchurch Hospital and there is a video of this in the documentation.
We’ve got plans for other APIs in future and I’d be interested to hear any ideas on this front. Our next will enable embedding links to launch other clinical applications (e.g. e-referrals, decision support tools) directly into pathways.
I’m going to be overseas from 28th June to 24th July but if you want to know more in the interim feel free to contact the support team.
Greetings
Recently we have a link or tab that allows access to the pathway relevant to the e referral you are doing which seems the opposite of what you are postulating. Would be great if follow pathway and then links to appropriate e referral which is what I presume your email is referencing
Grahame Jelley
Sounds promising @kieran @peter.freeman re Hospital HP rollout to DHBs - there needs to be resourcing at the DHB (and therefore keenness) - I expect this is a key contributor to the apparent randomness in who’s got HHP.
Hi @kieran
That’s great to know the API for HealthPathways is now available. How long have you had the integration working with Cortex with this? I was in Christchurch recently after the ETIH (on 23 May) and was able observe a ward round with Cortex being used. I noticed the RMOs using hospital Health Pathways then - from memory this was linking from the Cortex screen. Would this have been with the API at that stage?
I would like to also thank @sax for arranging me to see the ward round.
Kind regards
Damon
Generally there seems to be a high level of enthusiasm for Hospital HealthPathways amongst hospital clinicians across NZ. We’re working on it…
As they were the first to put up their hand, our first implementation outside of Canterbury is actually in the Hunter New England region in Australia. We’re using this experience to inform the development of a package that other regions can adopt. There are some significant additional challenges in running a combined Community and Hospital HealthPathways programme in terms of coordinating work and ensuring clinical alignment of the resulting pathways between the two sites. Canterbury, and to a degree Hunter, have been through a learning curve on this with us and we are developing guidance, tools, and training to make this easier for the next region.
We hope to have a package that others can adopt later this year or early next. A significant investment is required by each region, not just in the HP platform, but also in establishing a local team to adapt/localise the pathways into their environment. Sponsoring this kind of project is a challenge for all DHBs these days so there is an open question about whether the MoH has a role to play in this if it can help get national clinical standards into practice.
At last update my understanding is that the Cortex integration has not been released yet although the development work has been done to enable the video in the API docs - but if not released it should be coming soon.
Yes we looked at this - there are some quirks to our use case that didn’t clearly fit (but I must admit we didn’t look too deeply and we’re not experts on this). Specifically:
We need to offer a choice of different publications depending on context (Community and Hospital HealthPathways).
We need to map the request to the appropriate local HealthPathways instance - currently via postcode.
We need to support a simple link to the homepage.
We need to expose our full SNOMED-pathway mapping to vendors to help them with their mapping if they don’t natively support SNOMED.
That said we’re keen to use open standards where they apply and took the view that we’d put it out there in the simplest way we knew and would see what feedback we got. We can potentially layer standards over the top if the demand is there, now that we have the core functionality working.
Until now people have hard-coded URL links to HealthPathways from other systems including e-referrals, but this requires careful mapping and is fragile if URLs change. The Pathway Link API addresses this.
Our next API (App Launch API) will support clicking a button in a pathway to launch another application (e.g. CDSS).
Interesting !! So do we not all sing off the same pathways songsheet. Are we not past the us and them environment and in a new era of Whanau centred care where pathways should be about care of patient and therefore a continuum of health journey. Surely one pathway per journey - community to hospital and back home to community. Not sure many in our hospital colleagues currently observe the recommendations of the current pathways . Would be a great research project to map healthpathways page views across the sector. I recognise it is a behavioural change which I personally have taken time to incorporate into my workflow but the pathways are now more easily accessed when doing a referral at least as reference. As prior post suggest more intergrated flow via API and pathway drive the appropriate referral rather than the other way round would be a great step. I asked the API question in Northland . Seems unfortunately no investment dollars available to consider such logical implementation.
Assume you’re referring to the notion that some DHBs think HealthPathways isn’t suitable (for want of better word) to their workflow. A separate problem is that there needs to be localisation of any given pathway for it to work well in a given locality, and this entails resource e.g. the acute stroke reperfusion pathway features a CDHB specific form (i.e. owned by relevant CDHB governance body). This level of detail is great for RMOs to have, but also means it’s not necessarily appropriate to simply turn on CDHB HealthPathways in a different DHB. Patient centred care should be sensitive to local infrastructure.
We have just implemented primary health pathways. I was disappointed that there were no secondary aka hospital pathways included. Being interested in an integrated patient centered (and empowered) pathway aka Home to Home; I see two separated applications as adding a virtual barrier separating Primary from Secondary care (when I am spending a considerable amount of time deconstructing the historical barriers we already have).
I see APIs as a possible way of overcoming that imposed barrier by linking primary pathways with hospital pathways.
Wish me luck 1st in getting hospital pathways and 2nd in using the API to get an integrated pathway and model of care for patients and clinicians!