We have heard it said often enough: the traditional way of building clinical apps is broken. When developers need to spend 80% of their time wrangling data models, compliance and integration and only 20% actually building the clinical workflow and UX, things need to change.
It is time to do things differently. Using an open data platform such as Cadasto as the data foundation for clinical app development is the way to flip the script. In this article, we highlight 5 ways in which Cadasto can reduce clinical app development time.
1. Don’t Re-Invent the Wheel: Use Ready-Made Clinical Models
Instead of spending months in meetings with clinicians trying to define what a ‘blood pressure’ or ‘adverse reaction’ data structure looks like, you can use the pre-modeled openEHR Archetypes. All Archetypes in the openEHR Clinical Knowledge Manager have been created and peer-reviewed by actual clinicians / clinical modellers and are available open-source.
2. The Reference Model
In traditional healthcare software, developers must design and build a new database structure for every new app or clinical workflow, which is a slow, expensive process that isolates data in proprietary silos.
In contrast, the openEHR Reference Model used by open data platforms like Cadasto provides a pre-built, scientifically validated data structure that accommodates any medical concept out of the box. Because this underlying database structure is completely stable and never needs to be redesigned or modified, software teams can bypass backend data engineering entirely.
3. Simplified Querying
Writing complex SQL joins across hundreds of healthcare tables takes an enormous amount of time. Open data platforms such as Cadasto support the standardised Archetype Query Language (AQL). AQL allows developers to write powerful, semantic queries that are completely independent of how the data is physically stored in the database.
4. Out-of-the-Box Interoperability
If you build a custom database, you will eventually have to spend months building custom integrations and converters to talk to the enormous number of different EHRs and systems out there. Open data platforms such as Cadasto treat interoperability as a core feature.
5. Parallel Development
The openEHR standard embraces the architectural philosophy of two-level modelling: the software / database is separate from the clinical knowledge layer. This means that your software development team can focus entirely on building a beautiful, high-performance user interface according to the Reference Model, while your clinical team simultaneously designs the precise data points (archetypes) required for the medical workflow. This separation allows teams to work in parallel, drastically accelerating your time-to-market.
Build Your Clinical App on Cadasto?
If you would like to use the Cadasto data platform as the data foundation for your application, do pop us a message. We’d love to discuss your ideas and requirements with you.
