Boise, ID (Oct. 29, 2019) — Kno2, the company that provides interoperability as a service to everyone in health care, today announces the expansion of their developer platform to include new simple REST-based application programming interfaces (APIs) that extend interoperability beyond electronic health record (EHR) to EHR communications to the common business tools found in provider offices everywhere, including office imaging equipment, email and others.
A critical function of any clinical system, such as an EHR, is to secure, audit and control access to sensitive patient records contained within. Yet, millions of times every day, patient records are exchanged using tools that are disconnected from the EHR introducing significant risk for breach and inefficiency. Securely connecting these tools back to the EHR and the broader provider community has been largely ignored due to anticipated gains that EHR to EHR interoperability would bring.
Now, leveraging Kno2’s substantial investment in connecting and normalizing communication across many EHRs and networks including Fast Interoperability Healthcare Resources (FHIR), Direct secure messaging using the DirectTrust framework, patient information query with providers live on Carequality, including those connected through Commonwell Health Alliance and native EHR APIs, manufacturers of these common business tools can now quickly and easily connect their solutions to the entire health care ecosystem, avoiding expensive customized solutions.
Xerox Corporation is the first of these manufacturers to leverage the power of Kno2’s expanded APIs transforming Xerox multi-function printers (MFPs) to become interoperable health care devices, giving providers additional controls over managing PHI without requiring significant change or investment.
Typically, in most provider offices, sensitive patient records are scanned at the MFP and released to a local directory, emailed or faxed to an uncontrolled destination for manual attachment to the patient record later in the process. These broken workflows introduce significant risk to securing PHI, delays the availability to the provider and requires multiple inefficient steps for handling. Now, through a simple connection using Kno2, a Xerox health care MFP is enabled for secured communication with virtually any certified or Kno2-integrated EHR within the provider’s office and their external trading partners. A once susceptible scanned patient record now becomes an interoperable document securely transmitted to intended destinations. Gone are the days of expensive custom interfaces.
“With tremendous strides being made in interoperability across healthcare, it’s our passion to extend this to every vendor in an affordable, streamlined fashion,” said Kno2 CEO Jon Elwell. “With the release of our expanded APIs, we are disrupting disconnected PHI workflows everywhere by giving simple connectivity back into the broad healthcare ecosystem, including most EHRs.”
Elwell continues, “We’re on our way to connecting every major manufacturer of these common business tools and look forward to seeing a disruptive change in healthcare over the next couple of years.”
With a strong emphasis by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the federal government on the seamless and secured electronic exchange of patient information, health care is amidst exciting transformation. While paper-based and disconnected communications are still a reality, Kno2 is working hard to drive interoperability everywhere across the care continuum and within the four walls of any health care provider office.
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About Kno2
Kno2 is leading health care’s path to interoperability across every patient care setting. Kno2: Interoperability as a Service (IaaS) turns on connectivity to millions of health care providers and the capability to send, receive, find and use patient information with everyone. Kno2’s IaaS enables access to providers via cloud faxing, direct secure messaging, patient information query and patient care networks (referrals, ACOs, HIEs) guided by connectivity assessments and analytics.
