Analogies help translate the SynapticGrid and what it can do for healthcare, but these analogies are only part of the story:
· Apple’s iPhone has it’s AppStore. (notice RIM/Blackberry playing catch-up with the development of apps and a distribution channel). The App Store is not just a portal that distributes cool gadgets, widgets, and apps for a particular piece of hard-ware; it is also a development platform complete with APIs and SDKs. The strategic importance of the App Store is that it opened up the iPhone to mass collaboration, to the global development community, not just Apple developers and VARs.
· Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. Similar to Apple’s App Store, the AppExchange is an example of a registry of apps that greatly enhance the performance of Salesforce.com – for example, integration-as-a-service apps that let Salesforce exchange data with other applications, or web services bolt-ons that optimize Salesforce for use in specific environments (e.g. law firms). Salesforce also has force.com, an entire platform devoted to the development community, putting them into the game of developing for Salesforce,com and beyond.
Both Apple’s App Store and Salesforce’s AppExchange have realized several key benefits that healthcare, healthcare information technology (HCIT) and healthcare information exchange (HIE): opening their platform to enable mass collaboration has been wildly successful, spawning new uses for their apps, new distribution channels, and new sales opportunities that neither company could have ever imagined.
Every single HCIT and HIE vendor, every solution, device, information service, etc. should either have it’s own app store (registry of information services), or be distributable via a registry like the app store. The SynapticGrid can enable this. Or if you develop your own app store or appexchange capability, make sure that the SynapticGrid can re-distribute these apps.
Remember, Apple’s App Store and Salesforce’s AppExchange are examples of one-to-many registries of information services: one device or one application to many end-users and developers. If you develop your own capabilities in this regard, keep in mind that healthcare is almost always “many-to-many” – meaning that your app will almost certainly have to live in many types of ecosystems (or networks, or HIEs) and co-exist with many other apps.
You need to enable your apps to be mashed up or bundled into other information services exchanges, registries, grids, networks, etc. The SynapticGrid is a place to start.
You need an app store for your apps, solutions, widgets, interfaces. The SynapticGrid is a mall of these stores providing a single place for many-to-many collaboration. Build your app store. Put a virtual representation of it (a second location, if you will), in the SynapticGrid. Go find other malls. Distribute your apps far and wide.
Get Synaptic.
