CommonSpirit Health speeds ahead with data-driven patient services

With Axway’s Amplify API Management Platform, CommonSpirit Health has developed a rigorous data governance framework that helps ensure sensitive medical data is always protected. And it is enabling better patient experiences, fulfilling its mission of building healthy communities, advocating for the poor and vulnerable, and innovating how and where healing can happen.

Building digital capabilities with legacy infrastructure

Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, CommonSpirit Health is one of the largest nonprofit hospital chains in the U.S. The health system employs around 150,000 people and delivers care services through a system of hospitals and other centers in 21 states.

In order to fulfill its ambitious mission to enhance the patient experience, CommonSpirit Health wanted to start building next-generation services like precision medicine and telemedicine on secure, scalable APIs. The group had already been using Axway Managed File Transfer for many years, and it remains an important component of its enterprise service bus architecture, allowing the secure exchange of data within its on-premises healthcare environment.

The next step was to enable support for APIs, enhancing CommonSpirit’s architecture with a powerful way to deliver new development capabilities. The organization needed to enable advanced digital capabilities while maintaining tight control over data and costs.

“Based on our success with Axway Managed File Transfer and our positive experiences working with Axway, we were confident that the Amplify platform would help us realize our API goals,” says Deepak Mahajan, System Manager — Technology and Platforms at CommonSpirit Health.

Implementing a robust API platform

Committed to service innovation, CommonSpirit Health is now empowering its developers to build modern platforms that deliver on its patient experience targets, while avoiding the need to rip and replace the legacy systems at the heart of the organization.

The Amplify API Management Platform allows CommonSpirit Health to control tightly the discovery, reuse, and governance of APIs across all parts of its IT environment.

“The governance framework around our APIs — managed via the Amplify platform — lets us guarantee that the information will be handled in accordance with stringent regulatory requirements around patient privacy and data protection,” says Mahajan.

The organization established a dedicated Center of Enablement for APIs with a mandate to set and enforce API standards, including information security, rate limiting and thresholds, data reduction, and more.

CommonSpirit’s enterprise service bus covers many integration domains across hundreds of legacy healthcare applications. Enabling support for APIs allowed teams to create a layer of abstraction that hides this complexity from the developer.

“For the consumers of our data, APIs help us guarantee that the information they need will be delivered to the right destination in the right format and at the right time,” explains Mahajan. “And for the business, the governance framework around our APIs — managed via the Amplify platform — lets us guarantee that the information will be handled in accordance with stringent regulatory requirements around patient privacy and data protection.”

Ready to enhance patient experiences today and tomorrow

The company now offers its developers a catalog of approved APIs, helping to accelerate delivery cycles, reduce duplication of effort, and cut time-to-market for new services.

“Thanks to the Amplify platform, we can use our legacy systems to support cutting-edge technologies such as streaming, machine learning, and AI — empowering our developers to build next-generation services and helping CommonSpirit Health to enhance the patient experience,” concludes Mahajan.