INTERFACE ENGINE CONVERSION: DONE THE RIGHT WAY

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1 INTERFACE ENGINE CONVERSION: DONE THE RIGHT WAY Randy Baldie Healthcare Solutions Delivery Manager & Laurie Johnson Healthcare Solutions Senior Consultant Xerox Consultant Company IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

2 OVERVIEW Successful strategies, key considerations, and factors and best practices, that are critical to converting or upgrading your organization's interface engine environment How to plan for your interface engine conversion and beyond Budget considerations for an interface engine conversion How to develop a plan to effectively convert your interfaces How to develop code using best practices How to successfully test and engage resources for integration testing How to reduce the overall costs associated with conversion and integration IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

3 STRATEGIC PLANNING WHERE TO START? Factors to consider and deal with before you start any Conversion Organizations Culture & Structure Organizational Dependencies Internal or External Changes Tolerance for Risk or Change Stakeholder Identification Competing Projects or Initiatives IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

4 CULTURE & STRUCTURE Does the Organization have a history of large or complex project successes? Regardless of success or not so successful project outcomes, what were the lessons learned? What is the relationship between IT and executive leadership? What is the relationship between IT and the clinical leadership & staff? Do you have a mentor within your executive leadership who can advise you? If not, find one. IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

5 INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL CHANGES Are significant changes within your organization on the way? Major additions or upgrades to applications or infrastructure? Mergers, acquisitions or divestitures? Planned organic growth, new or additional initiatives? New regulatory, compliance or other regulation changes? Other changes? All of which may have a significant impact on your integration environment and your ability to respond. IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

6 STAKEHOLDER IDENTIFICATION As part of any project or undertaking to convert or replace any significant part of an organizations infrastructure, including its interface environment: All stakeholders need to identified Meet with them personally to understand what their concerns or issues are, of any Understand who will be a supporter and who will not be in favor of your project or initiative You must have a communications plan Communicate and inform throughout the project or conversion IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

7 COMPETING PROJECTS OR INITIATIVES As part of any project or undertaking to convert or replace any significant part of an organizations infrastructure, including its interface environment: Management, by and large has unlimited expectations While you have limited resources You need a view to the bigger picture Budgets Resources Both people and facilities Overall organizational project priorities IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

8 TOLERANCE FOR RISK OR CHANGE How does your organization handle rick or change? The answer will affect your planning when undertaking a conversion in your integration environment This is where you understanding of your culture and feedback from stakeholders is critical Seek advice from your mentor, if you have one IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

9 ORGANIZATIONAL DEPENDENCIES One of best ways to manage this is with an organization wide timeline that includes all of the physical and logical dependencies that can or will affect your conversion effort Good communication tool and can be easily maintained IGUANA USER CONFERENCE 2013

10 REVIEW FACTORS IN INTERFACE ENGINE CONVERSION What are some of the determining factors for converting your interface engine environment? Your current engine environment is obsolete or support is scheduled to end soon Is your engine and its environment a single point of failure? Not redundant Not fault tolerant Are you being required to connect and pass data between portals or to use Web Services? Does your current engine support them? Does interface development take too long?

11 DETERMINE TECHNICAL/TACTICAL FACTORS What questions need answers for TODAY? How to scale my interface engine to meet growth, current/future transaction needs or requirements What are the hardware requirements of a new interface engine environment? Are you virtualizing your IT server environment? If so can your integration engine take advantage of these cost saving measures? Can it run in a physical, virtual environment or a hybrid? Will the integration development software be compatible with the standard version of OS supported by your organization?

12 STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE What should you be thinking about for TOMORROW? Are you participating in emerging Health Information Exchanges (HIE s), Accountable Care Organizations (ACO s) or Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs)? Are you planning or preparing to integrate with the world outside of your own firewall? There are new emerging standards beyond HL7 and others outside of healthcare HIE! ACO! RHIO! These examples are from healthcare, but any industry must still have its planning Why is this important?

13 DETERMINE YOUR NEEDS What should you be thinking about for TOMORROW? How many FTE are required to sustain your CURRENT integration engine and interfaces? How many FTE will it require to meet future and/or planned development? ü Is it cost prohibitive? ü Will you have issues finding enough resources to fulfill your needs? ü What type of development background will they have? Can your train them easily? Do you have current or new regulatory or compliance requirements that necessitate better integration engine monitoring and reporting tools?

14 TACTICAL PLANNING Evaluate Internally: How complex are your existing interfaces? Evaluate your new engine Which features, tools and reports are useful? What are the features and functions that are missing? Create a list of questions to ask of the new interface engine vendor???

15 BUDGET CONSIDERATIONS Based on your organization's business drivers, strategic and tactical plans Are you looking to simplify your integration environment Are you looking to a cloud based solution? A 3rd party hosting solution? Initial Budget Factors: or just upgrading your existing integration model?

16 BUILD A BUDGET Budget Considerations: Develop your capital budget based on your infrastructure choices Hardware Ø Physical, Virtual or Hybrid Ø Hardware Cost One Time Ø Annual Hardware Cost Hardware Software Ø Software Cost One Time Ø Annual Software Support Cost Ø Cost per Channel/Thread/Interface Ø Cost of Add-On Packages and/or Options Software

17 BUILD A BUDGET Staffing plan, same head count, higher head count or lower headcount based on engine choice FTE requirement to sustain the existing integration engine FTE requirement to deploy the new integration engine FTE requirement to sustain the new integration engine Temporary and FTE options Training costs Budget Considerations: What are the cost elements? Ø Initial Training Ø On-Going Training how is it done Ø Travel Costs, if any

18 CONVERSION PLANNING Why do you need a plan in the first place? To reduce the risk and control the costs

19 CONVERSION PLANNING What are the key considerations when building your plan? TIME RISK Finding the balance between time and risk

20 CONVERSION PLANNING What are the most common plans for engine replacement? INVISIBLE vs. VISIBLE Conversion Plans

21 CONVERSION PLANNING INVISIBLE LAB Old Engine EMR LAB New Engine EMR Recreating existing workflow/interfaces without anyone noticing Develop quickly and spend the majority of time testing / comparing production & test WHITEPAPER: How to avoid the Test, Switch, Pray mentality Consider moving interfaces live one at a time

22 CONVERSION PLANNING VISIBLE LAB Old Engine EMR LAB New Engine EMR Changing your integration engine at the same time you change other major IT components The priority will always be the new system, not the interfaces Be prepared for a full go-live date (Big Bang)

23 CONVERSION PLANNING FROM VISIBLE TO INVISIBLE LAB! OLD ENGINE" EMR 1! EMR 2! If time is limited, consider a 'patch' interface from the old to new (small delta) When more time is available, do an INVISIBLE change from the patch to a new interface

24 CONVERTING INTERFACES The Build Process Review current documentation Identify common file structures and repeatable code Decide on naming convention Review current interface wish items I wished I had changed the method to a look-up based upon a file Update documentation to reflect new standards and methods Encouraged to adopt or develop common coding standards and methodologies

25 BEST PRACTICES FOR TESTING Make a solid test integration plan Gather test messages early and use external products to do comparisons before integration testing Spread the word to management, application, clinical and vendor team members that resources will be necessary to properly do integration testing Ask for necessary resources and with solid deadlines, setting expectations early Set expectations on what and how much testing will be done and who needs to be involved Obtain approvals for test plans

26 OPERATIONAL COSTS Hidden Costs The real costs start the day you deploy Diagnosing problems, training staff, monitoring interfaces, etc. The more problems you can solve without outside intervention, the more you can reduce your costs

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