Medcurio VennU Access: Enabling Scalable Healthcare AI & Automation
Study in collaboration between Medcurio and Healthcare Innovation and Technology Lab (HITLAB)
Authors: Jinu Mathew Valayil, PhD | Vandana Yadav, MS | Stan Kachnowski, PhD MPA
Executive Summary
Healthcare systems face the challenge of improving care while controlling costs. Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer significant opportunities to enhance both financial and quality outcomes. Realtime access to Electronic Health Records (EHR) data is essential for leveraging automation and AI. However, health systems encounter considerable obstacles in utilizing real-time EHR data. Traditional methods, including FHIR APIs, EHR vendor APIs, HL7, and custom-built APIs, often have limitations such as restricted data access, high implementation and maintenance costs, or the need for extensive technical expertise.
Medcurio’s VennU Access addresses these issues by providing a no-code solution that simplifies API creation and deployment. This enables healthcare teams to access any EHR data in real-time through a single, secure endpoint. Analysts can quickly generate, deploy, and maintain codeless APIs for any application without needing expensive programming resources, reducing tasks that typically take months to just days.
HITLAB, a leading digital health innovation and research organization, conducted an independent evaluation of VennU Access. This assessment involved shadowing, interactive testing, and heuristic evaluation to examine the platform’s functionality and user experience.
The evaluation highlighted the platform’s advantages, including its user-friendly design, error prevention capabilities, robust security features, scalability, and performance optimization.
VennU Access reduces the time and effort required to access and maintain real-time EHR data by up to 90%. It accelerates time-to-market and supports rapid iterations to enhance application performance and user trust. Advanced security measures, such as field-level encryption and role-based access control safeguard sensitive patient information. The platform’s scalability ensures it can efficiently manage heavy data loads while maintaining consistent performance during peak periods. VennU Access empowers healthcare systems to streamline back-office operations, optimize resource management, enhance clinical workflows, and improve patient support services. This alleviates administrative burdens, enhances patient outcomes, and supports financial sustainability in a challenging healthcare environment. By providing straightforward, real-time access to EHR data, the VennU Access platform opens up new automation opportunities for healthcare systems, fostering innovative approaches to optimize operations and increase efficiency.
Background
Problem & Opportunity
Financial sustainability is becoming a major challenge in healthcare, especially as publicly funded healthcare grows and the average reimbursement for services decreases [i]. This puts significant pressure on healthcare systems to reduce operational costs, improve efficiency, and maintain highquality care. In this context, automation and AI present a great opportunity to streamline healthcare processes, with applications ranging from administrative tasks such as billing and scheduling to clinical processes like inpatient safety management and care coordination [ii, iii, iv]. Research shows that deploying automation and analytics could save nearly $200 billion to $360 billion in U.S. healthcare spending [v].
The success of automation in healthcare depends on real-time access to EHR data. However, healthcare systems are constrained by inadequate interoperability
technology. Despite significant advancements, several critical challenges persist:
- Limited Data Access: Vendor APIs, FHIR APIs, and HL7 are the most commonly used methods for real-time EHR data access, but they only cover a fraction of the available data, leaving many EHR fields inaccessible. These methods also involve lengthy timelines for implementation or modification. To address these gaps, some healthcare systems use custom APIs, but this approach demands highly specialized and costly skills, long implementation timelines, and maintenance challenges. These limitations make it challenging to fully support the various use cases a healthcare system wants to address, restrict the effective integration of data into workflows and applications, and limit the scope of automation in clinical and operational processes.
- Lack of Real-Time Data Access: When real-time data cannot be accessed by traditional methods, healthcare systems default to batch processing of historical data or data that is delayed by 24 hours or more. This severely limits automation capabilities since many of the most valuable workflows, such as checking provider schedules, room availability, or inpatient discharge management, require up-to-date information. These delays can impact the responsiveness and effectiveness of healthcare operations.
- Lack of Precise Access: EHR Vendor APIs, FHIR APIs, and HL7 enable access to pre-specificized EHR data, often delivering more information than required. This data bloat and other queueing issues can cause processing delays which impact user trust and healthcare operations.
- Economic Challenges: Developing and maintaining custom APIs or implementing third-party solutions demands a significant investment of time and money. The estimated cost of building APIs can range from $25,000 to $80,000, depending on the number of endpoints, data volume, and security requirements [vi]. However, this cost can inflate very quickly for large-scale organizations (i.e., over 1 million members and/or patients). Some sources estimate that a FHIR-based digital transformation for such organizations can exceed $2,000,000 annually, factoring in expenses for employees, infrastructure, licenses, security, and management [vii]. EHR Vendor APIs and FHIR APIs incur significant development and maintenance costs, particularly due to the time required for implementation, customizations, and troubleshooting.
- Reliance on Specialized Talent: Developing and maintaining API-enabled systems require a multidisciplinary team skilled in data analytics, API DevOps, programming, and IT architecture. Analysts depend on developers and IT experts for even minor modifications or updates to APIs, leading to delays and higher costs. Furthermore, the shortage of skilled professionals makes it difficult to secure the required expertise, causing additional strain on resources.
- Security Challenges: Ensuring the security of patient data is a critical challenge when accessing EHRs. Weak security protocols significantly increase the risk of data breaches, deterring healthcare systems from fully integrating and leveraging EHR data for automation. In 2023, the healthcare industry experienced an average cost of $10.93 million per data breach, nearly double the cost faced by the financial industry [viii].
- Scalability and Performance: APIs must be able to handle heavy transaction volumes with minimal performance impact on backend systems. This capability is essential for managing real-time data requests from various applications, ensuring seamless integration, and maintaining operational efficiency across systems.
- Integration Challenges: APIs need to interact with various external systems, services, and databases, each with different protocols, formats, and behaviors. This complexity can lead to issues with data consistency, accuracy, and performance, requiring extensive testing and validation to achieve reliable data exchange.
- Downtime: Updates to the EHR database can cause traditional methods and custom-built APIs to malfunction or stop working. These disruptions can cause application errors and may take weeks of time and effort to resolve, disrupting workflows and delaying access to critical patient information.
According to a 2022 survey by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 57% of the digital health companies surveyed reported using a combination of standards-based and proprietary APIs for EHR integration. These companies identified various challenges associated with API usage, with high fees being the most frequently cited barrier (47%) [ix].
Top 10 Substantial barriers to integrating with EHRs via APIs
How Is Medcurio Changing the Game for EHR Access?
To address the challenges in accessing and utilizing EHR data, Medcurio developed the VennU Access platform—a no-code API generation platform with a graphical user interface that allows analysts to easily build APIs for accessing EHR data. VennU Access provides secure access to 100% of EHR data and allows seamless data transfer into applications.
By offering efficient, cost-effective, and scalable data access, VennU Access unlocks the potential for automation to reduce costs, improve patient outcomes, and enhance the overall healthcare experience.
VennU Access: One Endpoint, Many Uses
Key Features of VennU ACCESS
- Comprehensive Data Access: VennU Access offers access to all EHR data fields via a single endpoint, allowing healthcare systems to efficiently access up-to-date information. Real-time data synchronization minimizes delays in critical workflows such as scheduling, patient monitoring, and care coordination.
- Cost and Resource Efficiency: By eliminating the need for custom-built APIs for each use case and avoiding transaction fees of standard APIs, VennU Access reduces access time and effort by up to 90%. It also reduces the need for specialized technical talent, enabling API development and deployment to be completed by those who best understand the data in days, instead of months.
- Scalability and Flexibility: VennU Access supports the creation of APIs tailored to specific needs, with the ability to export and use these APIs across different EHR instances. APIs can be deployed in days and modified in minutes, ensuring rapid adaptability to changing data needs.
- Robust Security and Privacy: VennU Access offers a field-level security model with end-to-end encryption, zero data persistence, and auditing. It is installed entirely on the customer’s infrastructure, and Medcurio does not manage or control customer data. The platform has achieved SOC 2 Type II certification, demonstrating that the necessary controls are in place to protect sensitive data when hosting it on client infrastructure.
- Enhanced Performance: To maintain efficient API performance and prevent backend overload, VennU Access incorporates features such as throttling, timeouts, and configurable limits on requests. These mechanisms regulate resource usage, ensuring system stability and optimal performance even under heavy loads.
- Uninterrupted Workflows: VennU Access detects API field-level changes and immediately notifies system administrators with detailed insights for impacted APIs. This enables prompt resolution, minimizes downtime, and ensures continuous data access.
Traditional Methods/Custom APIs vs. VennU Access APIs
Footnotes
[i] American Hospital Association. (2024, May 2). New AHA report: Hospitals and health systems continue to face rising costs, economic pressures.
[ii] Carrus, B., Chowdhary, S., & Whiteman, R. (2020, September 16). Making healthcare more affordable through scalable automation. McKinsey & Company.
[iii] Baxi, S., Parikh, S., Peterson, M., & Ray, A. (n.d.). Setting the revenue cycle up for success in automation and AI. McKinsey & Company.
[iv] Rangappa, S., Chebrolu, K., Shudes, C., Elsner, N., & Wagh, M. (2022). Giving physicians more time for patient care. Deloitte Insights.
[v] Sahni, N. R., Carrus, B., & Cutler, D. M. (2021). Administrative simplification and the potential for saving a quarter-trillion dollars in health care. JAMA, 326(17), 1677-1678.
[vi] Apptunix. (2024). Custom API development services: What is the process and how much does it cost?
[vii] Smile Digital Health. (2024). Cut costs with managed services.
[viii] World Economic Forum. (2024). Cybersecurity: Healthcare pays the highest price of any sector for cyberattacks — that’s why cyber resilience is key.
[ix] Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. (2023). Insights into API Use to Enable Data Sharing Between EHRs and Apps.
Rapid Expert Verification
Objectives & Methodology
HITLAB conducted an in-depth evaluation of the Medcurio VennU Access platform to assess its usability, functionality, and security. The evaluation included multiple perspectives, focusing on analysts, security administrators, and system administrators. Researchers employed a combination of shadowing, interactive questioning, and heuristic evaluation to gather real-world insights into platform performance.
Objectives
- To verify that the Medcurio VennU Access platform aligns with its stated functionality and meets user expectations for usability, security, and effectiveness.
To identify any gaps between the platform’s features and practical application through a structured observational process.
Methodology
The evaluation approach is based on the Solution Assessment and Validation (SAV) practices outlined in the BABOK framework, emphasizing both solution validation and performance assessment [x] using the following methods:
- Observational Shadowing: Observed an analyst’s demonstration of the platform to assess its functionality, ease of use, and security features.
- Interactive Questioning: Asked targeted questions to probe specific functionalities, understand limitations, and clarify user-oriented features.
- Heuristic Evaluation: Assessed the platform against Jacob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics, identifying key strengths and areas for improvement [xi].
Evaluation Approach
The evaluation of the Medcurio Vennu platform was structured around four key categories:
1. Usability and User Experience
Assessed the platform’s ease of navigation and efficiency, including features such as intuitive interface design, quick access to key functionalities, error prevention, and streamlined workflows.
2. Usability and User Experience
Evaluated the platform’s ability to manage data reliably, ensuring that data input, processing, and output remain accurate and trustworthy, which is an essential requirement for handling sensitive healthcare data.
3. Security and Monitoring
Examined features such as role-based access control (RBAC), audit trails, and customer’s ability to track API usage. These measures are vital for protecting sensitive data and ensuring the platform meets industry standards and compliance requirements.
4. Scalability and Interoperability
Assessed the platform’s capacity to handle increasing data volumes and its ability to seamlessly integrate with existing systems, ensuring flexibility and readiness for evolving organizational needs.
Footnotes
[x] IIBA. (2015). Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide) Version 2.0. International Institute of Business Analysis.
[xi] Nielsen, J. (1994). Enhancing the explanatory power of usability heuristics. Proc. ACM CHI’94 Conf., 152-158.
Findings & Observations
1. Usability & User Experience
The VennU Access platform offers a streamlined, no-code interface that simplifies API creation, allowing users to build APIs without any programming expertise. This allows analysts to take full control of the API development process, reducing reliance on IT teams and speeding up time to market.
Its user-friendly design ensures smooth navigation, with clear, step-by-step instructions. These features optimize efficiency for both new and experienced users, minimizing the learning curve. Descriptive icons, color coding, and contextual labels further enhance comprehension, making it easy for users to quickly understand how to use the platform. VennU Access allows users to copy API request bodies into third-party platforms, streamlining integration with external systems.
VennU Access allows users to reorder and rename fields, apply filters, and implement advanced data transformations to tailor API outputs according to specific requirements. The inclusion of customer-defined functions and calculated fields allows precise control over output modifications.
To validate that APIs are properly built, VennU Access incorporates proactive warnings that alert users to potential issues before they arise. The platform provides actionable error messages that guide users toward efficient resolution.
Medcurio provides comprehensive customer support, including assistance with the initial launch of VennU Access platform, in-person training, comprehensive training materials, and support via Zendesk, a dedicated platform for managing support requests. The support team works to resolve issues quickly according to service level agreements (SLAs), ensuring a positive user experience.
Key Strengths
Usability
- Graphical interface simplifies API creation.
- Streamlined workflows reduce IT dependency.
- User-friendly design with step-by-step guidance.
- Easy and secure integration with third-party platforms.
Data Processing
- Flexible field customization and data transformations.
Error Management
- Proactive warnings prevent potential issues.
- Actionable error messages simplify troubleshooting.
Support
- In-person training and detailed resources provided.
- Zendesk ticketing for issue resolution.
- Dedicated support team ensures a seamless experience.
2. Data Integrity & Accuracy
The VennU Access platform ensures robust data integrity and accuracy through several built-in features. The platform integrates comprehensive quality assurance (QA) checks before API deployment. These checks ensure that field selections, constraints, indexing, and access permissions are applied correctly. Any discrepancies trigger actionable error messages, guiding users to resolve issues promptly.
The Preview Results feature allows users to validate API output before deployment by providing a pre-release view to ensure accuracy and functionality. It also displays database reads at the API level to shed light on the impact to the source system database. This enables users to assess whether the data meets their required specifications and make informed adjustments, reducing rework, optimizing efficiency, and improving reliability.
Key Strengths
Quality Assurance
- QA checks validate fields, constraints, and permissions for secure workflows.
Quality Valuation
- The ‘Preview Results’ feature ensures API accuracy and performance before deployment.
3. Security & Monitoring
The VennU Access platform is built for scalability, allowing organizations to scale by adding backend middleware servers as demand increases. This ensures reliable performance even with higher data volumes and increased consumer activity. VennU Access enables customers to control the number of concurrent connections made to the EHR database, minimizing impact and ensuring reliable performance.
To maintain efficient API performance and minimize source system impact, VennU Access incorporates features like throttling, timeouts, maximum database reads, and maximum response size which regulate resource usage and ensure the system remains stable under heavy loads.
Scalability is further enhanced by VennU access’s use of a single endpoint for all APIs, as opposed to other systems that require a separate endpoint for each API. This simplified structure makes it much easier to scale and manage data connections, streamlining the entire process.
VennU Access also includes a change detection feature that detects API field-level changes and notifies system administrators about impacted APIs, enabling quick resolution and minimizing downtime.
Key Strengths
Scalability & Performance
- Flexible architecture allows seamless scaling with increasing demand.
- Features like throttling, timeouts, maximum database reads, and maximum response size regulate resource usage to maintain stability.
Adaptibility
- The change detection feature notifies administrators of impacted APIs for quick resolution.
- Easy and secure integration with third-party platforms.
Unlocking Possibilities: VennU Access in Action
VennU Access offers the means to automate workflows in the most important and impactful areas of care and directly improve financial and quality performance.
1. Back Office Management
VennU Access improves the efficiency of back office operations by automating routine tasks and ensuring real-time access to critical data. Below are examples of how VennU Access is being leveraged to optimize administrative workflows:
Use Case 1: Automated Claims Processing
Payors often struggle with inefficiencies in claims processing, especially when dealing with duplicate claims. VennU Access enables real-time data extraction from EHR systems, allowing automatic identification, flagging, and resolution of duplicate claims. This reduces administrative workload, accelerates claims adjudication, and minimizes errors, leading to a more efficient and accurate process.
Use Case 2: Revenue Cycle Management
A leading health IT vendor aims to enhance and expand automation across its end-to-end revenue cycle products and services to increase speed to market and time to value. By integrating VennU Access for intelligent automation, the vendor can reduce EHR integration costs by over 70% and manual labor costs by more than 10%. This enables customers to increase revenue capture, enhance cash flow, and improve the patient experience, while also allowing the vendor to strengthen its market position with a cost-effective, high-value product.
2. Workforce & Resource Management
VennU Access enables healthcare organizations to manage critical resources more effectively by integrating real-time data, reducing inefficiencies, and minimizing waste.
Use Case 1: Appointment Scheduling
A regional healthcare network faced challenges with outdated provider schedules, which led to scheduling delays and inaccuracies. With real-time data access through the VennU Access platform, the organization anticipates building a real-time data solution that will optimize appointment scheduling and enhance overall workflow efficiency.
Use Case 2: Room Registration Data
A children’s hospital needed real-time access to both room availability and provider schedules to manage clinical procedure reservations. By leveraging VennU Access, the hospital aims to improve scheduling accuracy and reduce conflicts like double bookings, enhancing overall resource management.
3. Care Delivery & Population Health Management
The VennU Access platform’s seamless data integration enables efficient collaboration among care teams and empowers clinicians to make informed decisions. Below are examples of how VennU Access is used to optimize clinical workflows:
Use Case 1: In-Basket Triage Automation
A non-profit healthcare system is using VennU Access to unlock EHR data and feed it into a custom-built triage system that automates patient message routing to the teams most suited to handle them. The system is anticipated to reduce provider burden and improve response efficiency.
Use Case 2: Shift Change Board
A healthcare system seeks to enhance coordination among care team members during shift changes and ensure smoother patient handoffs. They aim to use VennU Access to populate a digital shift change board with real-time data on patient health statuses, care plans, and critical notes, ensuring all team members are informed and prepared for the transition.
Use Case 3: Real-Time Risk Modeling
A healthcare system uses a behavioral risk model to assess the risk levels of patients visiting the emergency department. However, the model relies on data that is 24 hours old, which limits the timeliness of risk evaluations. With the VennU Access platform’s real-time data access capabilities, the health system will be able to run the risk model and push results to clinicians every 60 seconds to provide timely notifications.
Use Case 4: Targeted Patient Outreach
VennU Access helped a healthcare organization enhance its patient outreach by utilizing a Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) score. This score reflects the complexity and health status of patients with chronic conditions, allowing the organization to identify those who need the most care. This targeted approach led to better outcomes and a more responsive healthcare experience.
4. Patient Support & Empowerment
VennU Access enables personalized services based on the most recent patient data, improving patient engagement and satisfaction.
Use Case 1: Improving Patient App Performance
A healthcare organization used VennU Access to speed up data retrieval in its patient app. Previously, the app experienced delays of over 30 seconds. With VennU Access, the response times were reduced to under 1 second, improving the overall patient experience.
Use Case 2: Transactional Delays due to Data Access
A healthcare organization used VennU Access to build an API that delivers precisely the encounter data required by a call agent to complete scheduling and patient follow up. This enabled reliable workflows, eliminated disruptions, increased call agent trust in data, and increased patient satisfaction.
From Challenge to Innovation: The Medcurio Story
Founded in 2020 as a spinout from the American Medical Association’s Health2047 incubator, Medcurio is focused on transforming the way healthcare systems access and use data.
The company was started by IT and data professionals who had firsthand experience with the challenges of accessing real-time EHR data in large health systems. They realized that delays and complexities in data access were significantly hindering both innovation and operational efficiency.
VennU Access was developed to overcome these hurdles and allow healthcare systems to securely access EHR data whenever needed.
Since its launch, Medcurio has been recognized for its innovative approach to healthcare data access. In 2024, KLAS Research named it one of the Emerging Healthcare IT Companies of the Year, based on feedback from hospitals and health systems. Looking ahead, Medcurio aims to drive advancements in healthcare automation, positioning itself as a trailblazer in the next wave of innovation.
Conclusion
Medcurio’s VennU Access platform offers a no-code API-building workflow that provides secure, real-time access to 100% of EHR data. This capability ensures seamless data flow into applications, broadening the possibilities for cost-effective, practical, and scalable intelligent automation.
With VennU Access, analysts can create, test, and deploy APIs within just a few days, reducing the time to market. They can minimize downtime with a change detection feature that enables quick resolution of data changes. Since VennU Access APIs can be easily modified in minutes, healthcare systems can adapt quickly to data changes and evolving data needs.
The platform enables the creation of APIs tailored for specific needs that can be easily used across a customer’s various EHR instances. By reducing the time and effort required for API development, deployment, maintenance, and troubleshooting, VennU Access cuts EHR integration costs and challenges by up to 90%, enabling healthcare systems to drive innovation efficiently.
HITLAB’s evaluation of VennU Access highlighted its standout features, including its user-friendly design, advanced customization options, strong security measures, and performance safeguards. VennU Access enables faster workflows, reduces administrative burden, and facilitates better patient experiences. The platform supports a wide range of use cases, from streamlining back-office tasks to improving clinical decision-making and enhancing patient engagement and support. Currently, Medcurio is focused on expanding the VennU Access footprint in health systems that use the Epic EHR, with plans to expand the reach of VennU Access to Meditech and Oracle Health EHRs.
By overcoming the barriers to real-time data access and interoperability, VennU Access unlocks new opportunities for innovation in care delivery, operational efficiency, and patient outcomes. Medcurio’s vision is to empower healthcare systems with the tools they need to transform data into meaningful action, paving the way for a smarter, more connected healthcare future.