Epic announces Connection Hub, a place for vendors to share their ability to interoperate with Epic software. The new site, which opens January 9, 2023, will allow any vendor with a connection to Epic to list their app and self-report if they have achieved successful data exchange. Site visitors, including Epic customers, can see information provided by the vendor, such as app descriptions and links to websites.
Connection Hub will be open to all vendors, with the goal of making it easy to join the online directory. Vendors who would like to be listed can join by providing their information and completing an optional questionnaire. Alongside Connection Hub, Epic will also launch Vendor Services–providing access to Epic’s newsletters, detailed tutorials, expanded testing sandboxes, and technical support.
The App Market will undergo renovations and relaunch later in 2023. Vendors currently in the App Market will automatically transition to Vendor Services. No connections will be impacted and vendors receiving services, APIs, and testing tools in App Market will continue to do so via Vendor Services. For those vendors currently listed with a live connection in the App Market, Epic will provide a simple way for them to transfer their existing information to Connection Hub.
Connection Hub represents another step in Epic’s ongoing support of open standards. In 2014, Epic launched its first wave of standard-based APIs through open.epic. Today, Epic maintains a portfolio of 450 FHIR APIs across 55 Resources including the latest R4 version, one of the largest FHIR API portfolios provided by a major EHR developer.
“Epic has a long history of exchanging data with applications,” says Sumit Rana, Epic’s SVP of R&D. “And Connection Hub expedites vendors’ ability to show Epic customers that their apps can exchange data with Epic.”