Skip to main content
Subscribe
  • Sign Up Free
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Current News
    • Providers
    • Insurance
    • Government
    • Finance
    • Technology
    • Safety & Quality
    • Digital Health
    • Transformation
    • ESG
    • People
    • Regional News
    • Digital Edition (Web Version)
    • Patients
    • Operations
    • Care Delivery
    • Payment
    • Midwest
    • Northeast
    • South
    • West
  • Blogs
    • AI
    • Deals
    • Layoff Tracker
    • HIMSS 2023
  • Opinion
    • Breaking Bias
    • Commentaries
    • Letters
    • From the Editor
  • Events & Awards
    • Awards
    • Conferences
    • Galas
    • Virtual Briefings
    • Webinars
    • Nominate/Eligibility
    • 100 Most Influential People
    • 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives
    • 40 Under 40
    • Best Places to Work in Healthcare
    • Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards
    • Top Innovators
    • Diversity in Healthcare
      • - Luminaries
      • - Top 25 Diversity Leaders
      • - Leaders to Watch
    • Women Leaders
    • Digital Health Transformation Summit
    • Leadership Symposium
    • Social Determinants of Health Symposium
    • Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference
    • Best Places to Work Awards Gala
    • Health Care Hall of Fame Gala
    • Top 25 Diversity Leaders Gala
    • Top 25 Women Leaders Gala
    • - Looking Ahead to 2024
    • - AI and Digital Health
    • - Hospital of the Future (Fall)
  • Multimedia
    • Podcast - Beyond the Byline
    • Sponsored Podcast - Healthcare Insider
    • Sponsored Video Series - One on One
    • Sponsored Video Series - Checking In with Dan Peres
  • Data & Insights
    • Data & Insights Home
    • Hospital Financials
    • Staffing & Compensation
    • Quality & Safety
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Data Archive
    • Resource Guide: By the Numbers
    • Surveys
    • Data Points
  • Newsletters
  • MORE+
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Media Kit
    • Jobs
    • People on the Move
    • Reprints & Licensing
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. Technology
March 04, 2016 11:00 PM

Sharing data more quickly, securely

Beth Kutscher
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    “We just kept asking ourselves the fundamental questions, and then we built it,” said Lisa Maki.

    One of the frustrating things about healthcare data is that they live in silos, so the user experience is far from seamless. Checking insurance eligibility, scheduling appointments and paying a bill each involves a separate interaction.

    But that's becoming unacceptable with the growth of high-deductible health plans and the corresponding wave of healthcare consumerism. Health systems and insurers need a platform that functions more like Amazon or Kayak.

    For Pokitdok, a San Mateo, Calif.-based technology company, the proliferation of high-deductible plans provided a “use case” for its platform. Patient experience suddenly mattered a lot more, and technology needed to catch up.

    “We just kept asking ourselves the fundamental questions,” said Lisa Maki, Pokitdok's CEO, “and then we built it.”

    A simple way to think about Pokitdok is to picture the operating system on Apple's iPhone. It has a number of native apps built in, but other software developers can also build on top of it. Pokitdok is like the iOS. It offers a number of “apps” for free—including software for checking a patient's insurance eligibility and claims history—and it charges a monthly fee, by number of transactions, for software developers that want access to its library. Enterprise customers also pay a subscription fee to access its platform and pre-built applications.

    Tanner

    PokitDok

  • Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.

  • Co-founders: Lisa Maki, CEO, and Ted Tanner, chief technology officer

  • Innovation: An API-based platform that allows healthcare data to be shared more quickly, cheaply and reliably.

  • Status: PokitDok last month secured an undisclosed investment from McKesson Ventures. In 2015 the company raised $34 million in a Series B round of funding.
  • What makes this data exchange possible are application programming interfaces, or APIs, which are a fast, cheap and reliable way of bridging information between different services and software.

    “We're calling it the API economy, and we've been working on getting our heads around them for the last 24 months,” said Tamara St. Claire, chief innovation officer at Xerox Healthcare, who has been following what PokitDok is doing. “Healthcare historically has been an industry of data silos. It's an API model that enables the exchange of data. We've never been able to do that in healthcare before,” she said.

    Maki previously worked at Microsoft and founded a predictive analytics company called BeliefNetworks, which she ultimately sold to Benefitfocus. But it was her own struggle with trying to find medical experts and experimental treatments for debilitating back pain that led her to tackle the challenge of breaking down the medical industry's data silos.

    “APIs are not a new solution—they're just new to healthcare,” Maki said. “Our APIs run on the most modern technology. We need it to be today. We need it to be flexible.”

    For software developers, APIs mean that they can add functionality to their own technology platforms without building each component from scratch. A telehealth vendor, for instance, can integrate an insurance eligibility checker through PokitDok's API library.

    “It also means that on Day One, they can scale nationally,” Maki said, because their technology is then accessible to all of PokitDok's subscribers.

    Under the current healthcare model, when providers have a question about a patient's insurance coverage, for instance, they use a clearinghouse. Each time they do that, they may pay a fee and there's a time lag, St. Claire said.

    “You had access to this data in a linear fashion,” she said. With an API approach, “You can have the conversation between provider and payer happen in real time, which doesn't happen now.”

    Ascension Health, the largest not-for-profit health system in the U.S., is a Pokitdok customer. The St. Louis-based system wanted to create a consumer-facing portal through which patients could shop for, schedule and purchase certain outpatient services, like imaging procedures.

    “They can start booking patients 24/7,” Maki said. “They can start experimenting with elastic pricing. No one else is providing the ability to create an end-to-end consumer experience.”

    The platform also allows data to be shared securely. Health systems can begin to apply the same big-data analytics that retailers use. For instance, when patients log on to a health system's portal to pay a bill, they can be prompted to schedule certain tests or procedures based on their health and claims histories. As Maki puts it, providers can “start to build a profile around that patient without ever seeing them.”

    PokitDok raised $34 million in a Series B funding round in August, and last month received an undisclosed investment from McKesson Ventures, the venture arm of McKesson Corp.

    “There's a need for new pipes and plumbing,” said Tom Rodgers, managing director at McKesson Ventures. “Pokitdok is an example of modernizing that.”

    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Send us a letter

    Have an opinion about this story? Click here to submit a Letter to the Editor, and we may publish it in print.

    Recommended for You
    Artificial Intelligence Breast Imaging 4.jpg
    AI biases have the potential to worsen health disparities, experts say
    shah mansion_0.png
    Feds can take millions from Outcome Health founder, judge rules
    Most Popular
    1
    Executives detail UnitedHealthcare, Optum Health's growth plans
    2
    Investors see opportunity in high-needs Medicaid market
    3
    Cigna, Humana in talks for merger this year: WSJ
    4
    Cigna Medicare Advantage future murky amid sale speculation
    5
    Teladoc CEO tamps down expectations of GLP-1s
    Sponsored Content
    Digital Health Intelligence Newsletter: Sign up to receive a twice-weekly (T, F) morning newsletter featuring the latest reporting on technologies, trends, players and money fueling the rapid changes in how healthcare is developed, paid for and delivered.
    Get Newsletters

    Sign up for enewsletters and alerts to receive breaking news and in-depth coverage of healthcare events and trends, as they happen, right to your inbox.

    Subscribe Today
    MH Magazine Cover

    MH magazine offers content that sheds light on healthcare leaders’ complex choices and touch points—from strategy, governance, leadership development and finance to operations, clinical care, and marketing.

    Subscribe
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • RSS

    Our Mission

    Modern Healthcare empowers industry leaders to succeed by providing unbiased reporting of the news, insights, analysis and data.

    Contact Us

    (877) 812-1581

    Email us

     

    Resources
    • Contact Us
    • Help Center
    • Advertise with Us
    • Ad Choices
    • Sitemap
    Editorial Dept
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Code of Ethics
    • Awards
    • About Us
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Modern Healthcare
    Copyright © 1996-2023. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Current News
      • Providers
      • Insurance
      • Government
      • Finance
      • Technology
      • Safety & Quality
      • Digital Health
      • Transformation
        • Patients
        • Operations
        • Care Delivery
        • Payment
      • ESG
      • People
      • Regional News
        • Midwest
        • Northeast
        • South
        • West
      • Digital Edition (Web Version)
    • Blogs
      • AI
      • Deals
      • Layoff Tracker
      • HIMSS 2023
    • Opinion
      • Breaking Bias
      • Commentaries
      • Letters
      • From the Editor
    • Events & Awards
      • Awards
        • Nominate/Eligibility
        • 100 Most Influential People
        • 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives
        • 40 Under 40
        • Best Places to Work in Healthcare
        • Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards
        • Top Innovators
        • Diversity in Healthcare
          • - Luminaries
          • - Top 25 Diversity Leaders
          • - Leaders to Watch
        • Women Leaders
      • Conferences
        • Digital Health Transformation Summit
        • Leadership Symposium
        • Social Determinants of Health Symposium
        • Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference
      • Galas
        • Best Places to Work Awards Gala
        • Health Care Hall of Fame Gala
        • Top 25 Diversity Leaders Gala
        • Top 25 Women Leaders Gala
      • Virtual Briefings
        • - Looking Ahead to 2024
        • - AI and Digital Health
        • - Hospital of the Future (Fall)
      • Webinars
    • Multimedia
      • Podcast - Beyond the Byline
      • Sponsored Podcast - Healthcare Insider
      • Sponsored Video Series - One on One
      • Sponsored Video Series - Checking In with Dan Peres
    • Data & Insights
      • Data & Insights Home
      • Hospital Financials
      • Staffing & Compensation
      • Quality & Safety
      • Mergers & Acquisitions
      • Data Archive
      • Resource Guide: By the Numbers
      • Surveys
      • Data Points
    • Newsletters
    • MORE+
      • Contact Us
      • Advertise
      • Media Kit
      • Jobs
      • People on the Move
      • Reprints & Licensing