Concept to Care speaks to Brendan Keeler. He is the Head of Product at Flexpa. Flexpa is a developer friendly infrastructure that connects applications to identified claims data. Flexpa enables effortless sharing of claims data with your application in seconds. They’ve created the fastest, simplest, HIPAA compliant method for accessing identified claims data from anyone.
You’re going to hear about Brendan’s experience at Epic and the role it played in laying the foundation for his healthcare career. Brendan will give us all a master class in interoperability, the types of problems and an in-depth view on the solutions in the market today. He will walk through his EMR selection playbook and share an intimate love letter to a particular EMR vendor. We will dissect Brendan’s brain for how he thinks about tech start up culture and how that manifests within Flexpa. Lastly, we understand the origin story of the Health API Guy and share lots of laughs throughout the episode.
Here are all the highlights of our conversation:
Brendan's odyssey through the realm of healthcare, and how he culminated his mastery of healthcare interoperability
Explaining the interoperability challenge, navigating the technical solutions available, and strategies for evaluating vendors in this landscape
Epic v Particle, an overview of what happened along with a perspective on potential paths forward
To EHR or not to EHR, how should think about build vs. buy, the len’s of your tech enabled organization, and a love letter to a headless EMR partner
Mastering your career journey: Cultivating your personal product “skill tree”, navigating expectations with finesse, and infusing humor into organizational culture.
Deep dive into who is the Health API guy and what’s next for him?
—
Where to find Brendan Keeler:
Substack: https://substack.com/@healthapiguy
—
Where to find Angela and Omar:
Angela Suthrave
Omar Mousa
—
Referenced:
Flexpa: https://www.flexpa.com/
Flexpa’s Substack: https://flexpa.substack.com/
Brendan Keeler’s Newsletter - Health API Guys Substack: https://healthapiguy.substack.com/
How to identify use cases for interoperability: https://healthapiguy.substack.com/p/how-to-win-friends-and-integrate
Choices for connecting with other systems: https://healthapiguy.substack.com/p/the-only-three-ways-to-integrate
Brendan Keeler’s EMR Playbook: https://healthapiguy.substack.com/p/to-ehr-or-not-to-ehr
Health API Guy’s API Bible: The New Testament - Walkthrough for on-ramp APIs, open-aggregators, and closed-aggregators: https://healthapiguy.substack.com/p/the-api-bibles-new-testament-aggregators
Health API Guy’s API Bible: https://healthapiguy.substack.com/p/the-previously-undiscovered-bible
Epic v. Particle Health - Part 1: https://healthapiguy.substack.com/p/epic-v-particle
Epic v. Particle Health - Part 2: https://healthapiguy.substack.com/p/epic-v-particle-2-the-problem-of
Elion’s Interoperability Guide: https://elion.health/resources/guide-interoperability
Elion’s Headless EHRs: A Primer: https://elion.health/resources/headless-ehrs
Brendan’s Favorite Headless EMR, Medplum: https://www.medplum.com/
Health Tech Nerds is a great resource for crowd sourcing solutions for problems you may have as a PM or Operator: https://www.healthtechnerds.com/
Elion: https://elion.health/
Epic: https://www.epic.com
Particle Health: https://www.particlehealth.com/
Carequality: https://carequality.org/
Redox: https://www.redoxengine.com/
Zus Health: https://zushealth.com/
Canvas: https://www.canvasmedical.com/
Oak Street Health: https://www.oakstreethealth.com/
Press Release for Oracle purchasing goBalto: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-buys-gobalto-101718.html
Brendan’s pick for user authentication and authorization management (replace Okta and Auth0), Work OS: https://workos.com/
Brendan’s pick for observability tooling, DataDog: https://www.datadoghq.com/
Skill Tree based RPG: Super fun and addicting game from our teenage years - Diablo II Lord of Destruction (2001): https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/diablo-ii-lord-of-destruction
Applying Skill Trees to your own life: https://medium.com/skilluped/the-skill-tree-principle-an-innovative-way-to-grow-your-skills-efficiently-7e6287e0748e
Kim Possible Quote, “Call me, beep me, if you want to reach me”: https://kimpossible.fandom.com/wiki/Call_Me,_Beep_Me
—
Check out our website: https://www.concepttocare.com
Follow us and Subscribe wherever you get your podcast:
Episode #5 - Brendan Keeler, Head of Product at Flexpa and Health API Guy