< + > Applying AI to Healthcare Integration and Interoperability

One of the coolest AI tools I’ve seen recently was the healthcare integration agent, Rhapsody Axon.  It’s an AI integration agent embedded directly in the Rhapsody and Corepoint platforms, built to speed up the work integration teams do every day. It also lines up with my theme that AI is going to be able to be applied to almost every aspect of healthcare.  In fact, that’s what makes Axon so cool.  Rhapsody applied AI to a topic that they understand deeply, and they know is a challenge for the interoperability and integration experts out there.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: as more AI agents show up across healthcare, they’ll all eventually need to move data across systems. Axon is an early example of an agent that doesn’t just answer questions about integration, it can actually help build the connections (not just wait for a human to do it).

This is why I was really excited to check out their webinar called “What’s Next in AI for Healthcare Interoperability? See Rhapsody Axon in Action.”  Click the link to watch the full webinar or check out the highlights below that we shared on social media during the event.

What do you think about applying AI to healthcare integration and interoperability?  What other novel approaches to AI in healthcare have you seen?  Let us know on social media.

How does Rhapsody Axon reduce the grind of integration work?

I’ve heard this from a number of integration experts in the past.  Many of them spend more time looking at the documentation than they do actually coding.  Not to mention time spent troubleshooting an integration that has broken because some interface has changed.  The time spent on these actions are real and required.  Axon’s AI helps remove some of this friction.

Is Rhapsody Axon embedded or a standalone tool?

I think every CIO I talk to is afraid of AI sprawl.  In other words, they’re afraid of having hundreds of different AI applications that they have to support.  Thus, it’s a welcome sight that Axon is embedded in Corepoint and Rhapsody.

How does Axon understand your integration environment?

I’m also impressed that Axon not only understands the standards and integration documentation, but it also understands your Corepoint and Rhapsody set up.  This type of personalization to your environment is so powerful and helpful when building new integrations or troubleshooting existing ones.

How does Axon help onboard new integration staff?

Of course, I also love the idea of Axon quickly upskilling a new person at your organization rather than having the new person continually bothering your other integration staff.  A new employee can ask Axon all the questions they want without annoying them.

How does Rhapsody Axon handle data security and privacy?

These are the types of questions I see a lot of CIOs asking of their AI vendors when it comes to AI security and privacy.  I love that Rhapsody just shared these details up front.

I think we’re probably going to have this conversation about technology replacing humans forever.  Clearly humans have shown themselves to be pretty resilient.  It’s great to see Axon helping those humans be more efficient.  As I often say, AI is going to replace all those time consuming things that humans don’t want to do.  That seems to be what Axon is doing for integration experts.

Can Rhapsody Axon build integrations automatically?

I was a little surprised that searching through standards documentation wasn’t on the list of things that most integration experts spend time on.  Although, maybe that’s part of the two that they listed.

No doubt these two tasks are important and accelerated by AI.  As their customer said on the webinar, if you don’t like Axon after you see how it can automatically create the integration routes for you, then he doesn’t know what to tell you. These agents can consume interface specs and create integrations for review. I’d add that if you don’t see the value in agentically created integration routes, you’re probably not an integration engineer.

AI programming engines have become all the rage.  Programmers have really come around to using them.  The problem is they don’t work for this kind of custom coding that’s needed for healthcare integrations.  That really is what makes Axon unique, but still in line with what’s happening with coding in other languages.

I imagine that an integration engineer’s least favorite task is upgrading their integration from one HL7 standard to the new one, or migrating an old HL7v2 interface over to FHIR. That’s a bunch of work to essentially make sure it keeps doing the same thing.  That’s not fun work.  In other words, it’s perfect work for an AI agent.

How are teams using Axon to review integration documents?

This example from Jennifer of how they’re using Axon was really brilliant.  No one likes reviewing documents for a new integration.  Axon can do that quickly and highlight the areas that really matter so you can quickly have the right conversation with the vendors you’re looking to integrate with.  That’s powerful.

I’ve felt Jennifer’s pain a lot with the Healthcare IT Today website.  I know just enough to be dangerous and things that would be easy and quick for an expert take me far too long.  AI has really helped me solve these more technical issues quickly.  Sounds like she’s doing the same in her job with Axon.

Having Axon run reports for her is fascinating too.  I love the concept that she ran the reports manually for so long that she can really know if the AI is doing well or not.  The fact that she trusts the AI now is saying a lot.

Those are a few of the highlights from the webinar.  You can watch the full webinar including a demo of Axon or check out the Rhapsody Axon page to see it in action for yourself. What do you think of this use case for AI in healthcare?