Metriport for Healthcare Organizations: An API Strategy for Patient Data Integration
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Healthcare organizations face a crisis of fragmented data. Critical patient information is scattered across disparate electronic health records, external specialists, and health information exchanges, creating dangerous gaps in clinical visibility.
Traditional point-to-point integrations cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and maintain yet still leave critical data gaps. But using an API can be a solution. Unified API platforms aggregate patient data from multiple sources through standardized interfaces, simplifying integration complexity while improving data completeness.
In this article, we’ll review one healthcare API rising in popularity, Metriport. We’ll look at the company’s beginnings, their business model, and their API capabilities.
Metriport's Backstory
Metriport emerged from firsthand frustration with healthcare data fragmentation. Co-founders Dima Goncharov and Colin Elsinga are longtime software engineering friends. They initially built a consumer health tracking app in 2021, envisioning a unified dashboard combining mood, fitness, journaling, and wellness data. The app gained enthusiastic users and earned a spot in Y Combinator's Summer 2022 batch.
During this journey, they discovered a far bigger pain point. As they spoke with U.S. healthcare companies, they were shocked by fragmented patient data. Chronic condition data lived in one app, mental health notes in another telehealth system, and hospital visit information locked in various portal silos.
The founders realized the urgent need for better interoperability tools and pivoted from their consumer app to tackling clinical data integration. By late 2022, Metriport had raised $2.4 million in funding and committed to an open-source strategy.
What is Metriport?
Metriport's core offering is an open-source Medical API and web-based dashboard that aggregates and standardizes clinical data into a single interface. The platform connects to major health information exchange networks, including CommonWell and Carequality, providing access to over 300 million patient records nationwide through one API.
The platform is FHIR R4-native and RESTful, allowing developers to query a patient's longitudinal health history in seconds. Metriport's engine automatically converts messy data formats like C-CDA documents, HL7 v2 feeds, and PDF files into clean FHIR JSON objects.
It performs intelligent data processing by standardizing terminologies, deduplicating records, and hydrating data with rich coding using SNOMED and LOINC. The output can be retrieved as raw FHIR data or as a human-readable Medical Record Summary PDF compiling the patient's entire history.
Why Healthtech Developers Are Rapidly Adopting Metriport's API Platform
Growing Developer Adoption in Healthcare Integration Projects
The open-source nature and plug-and-play design of Metriport's API have led to rapid uptake among digital health companies. Since its launch in 2023, Metriport has become a go-to source of truth for patient records in new healthcare applications.
Increasing Use by Healthtech Companies Building Clinical Solutions
Healthtech vendors building solutions for telehealth, care coordination, and remote monitoring choose Metriport instead of reinventing data integrations from scratch.
Some digital health leaders that rely on Metriport for comprehensive patient data are:
- Circle Medical
- Brightside Health
- WeightWatchers
Strong Developer Community and Comprehensive API Documentation
A strong developer community has formed around the platform, boosted by Metriport's public GitHub repository and active Slack channels. Comprehensive documentation and quick-start guides lower the learning curve significantly. The open-source codebase means engineers can inspect and contribute to the API's development, fostering transparency and collaborative improvement.
Proven Reliability Across Multiple Healthcare Application Deployments
Metriport's partnership with Athenahealth's marketplace in 2024 brought the platform into the workflows of thousands of providers, validating its robustness in production environments. Case studies from Metriport's customers demonstrate proven reliability across diverse healthcare settings, from hospice care to specialty clinics to value-based care organizations.
Open Source Foundation Enabling Customization and Transparency
The open-source foundation reassures organizations they won't face vendor lock-in. Healthcare organizations can self-host or customize components for their specific needs, while still benefiting from the community-driven improvements and vendor support that Metriport provides.
Simplified Development for Complex Healthcare Data Integration
For software teams, Metriport significantly reduces time and cost to build interoperability features. Traditionally, integrating with multiple EHRs or HIEs meant creating numerous point-to-point HL7 interfaces, each with proprietary quirks.
Single API Replacing Multiple Point-to-Point Integrations
Metriport collapses those connections into a single modern API, replacing what could be dozens of individual feeds. A healthtech company that might have spent months and hundreds of thousands of dollars integrating with multiple EHR systems can instead plug into Metriport once and immediately retrieve data from all connected sources.
Reduced Development Time for Healthcare Interoperability Features
Organizations report that using standardized RESTful APIs and FHIR data models speeds up integration projects compared to legacy HL7 interfaces. By eliminating the need to custom-build and maintain separate pipelines for each source, developers focus on product features rather than plumbing.
Standardized FHIR R4 Implementation Reducing Technical Complexity
The open-source SDKs and sandbox environment make prototyping especially quick, with developers testing sample patient data within hours. The standardized FHIR R4 implementation means developers work with consistent data structures across all sources, dramatically reducing parsing logic and transformation code.
Impact on Healthcare Technology Landscape
Metriport's approach is shifting the integration paradigm in healthcare IT. By providing a reusable data access layer, it enables smaller vendors and startups to build on a unified foundation rather than each creating their own integrations.
Healthcare organizations benefit from expanding Metriport-powered solutions that plug into existing systems.
Instead of being limited to a single EHR's capabilities, they can layer on specialized applications for:
- Care management
- Referral tracking
- Quality reporting
These apps all draw from the same unified patient data hub.
Understanding Metriport's Healthcare Data API Architecture
Technical architecture determines what's actually possible when integrating healthcare data. Understanding how Metriport structures data access helps organizations evaluate whether the platform supports their specific clinical workflows and interoperability requirements.
Unified Patient Data Access Across Multiple Sources
Metriport addresses the fundamental challenge of aggregating patient records across different organizations and systems.
A typical patient journey includes items like:
- Primary care records in one clinic's EHR
- Specialist consult notes in a hospital's system
- Lab results at an external company
- Claims data with an insurer
The platform links into major health information exchanges like CommonWell Health Alliance and Carequality. These are national networks covering hundreds of millions of patients. Through these HIE integrations, a single Metriport query fetches records from any provider connected to those networks.
API Connectivity to HIEs, EMRs, and Health Systems
Metriport's system acts as a hub that connects to many spokes in the healthcare data ecosystem. It maintains secure connections using industry standards like OAuth 2.0 and secure REST calls to various HIE networks and directly to some EHR vendor APIs.
The platform connects to frameworks such as eHealth Exchange and Carequality, which themselves bridge dozens of EHR systems nationally. From a technical standpoint, Metriport's FHIR-based API provides a unified query interface where a client application can request a patient's allergies or lab results by calling one endpoint.
FHIR R4 Compliance and Healthcare Data Standards Support
A key strength of Metriport's architecture is its full alignment with modern interoperability standards. The platform was built from the ground up on the FHIR R4 data model. This is now the required standard for certified EHRs' APIs under U.S. federal rules.
Metriport's API resources and JSON responses conform to the FHIR R4 specification. Medications come with RxNorm codes, diagnoses with ICD-10 or SNOMED CT codes, and labs with LOINC where available. In addition to FHIR, Metriport supports input and output in Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture format and PDF.
Critical Clinical Use Cases for Metriport Integration
Technology choices should align with clinical priorities. Understanding which use cases Metriport addresses effectively helps organizations determine whether the platform solves their most pressing data integration challenges and delivers measurable clinical value.
Longitudinal Patient Record Consolidation
One of the most valuable use cases for Metriport is building a single source of truth for each patient's medical history. Healthcare providers struggle to assemble a complete picture of patients who have seen multiple providers.
Aggregating Medical History from External Sources
Metriport tackles this by aggregating records from external sources into the local workflow. A primary care practice using Metriport can pull in its new patient's past records including:
- Immunization history
- Chronic condition diagnoses
- Past surgeries
- Specialist consult notes from other hospitals and clinics
Resolving Patient Matching Across Different Health Systems
The platform's ability to match patients across different systems helps resolve identity issues that plague longitudinal records. By using multiple identifiers and algorithms, it links records even when systems have variations in patient names.
Supporting Continuity of Care Across Specialists and Facilities
The platform deduplicates overlapping information automatically. So if the same lab result appears from two sources, it's only listed once. With a unified longitudinal record, clinicians get a complete view of the patient across all care settings, supporting better clinical decision-making and avoiding errors from incomplete information.
Real-Time Care Coordination and Hospital Notifications
Through integrations with HIEs and hospital networks, Metriport delivers ADT notifications and event triggers in near real-time. This is transformative for care management, allowing care teams to act quickly when patients interact with hospitals.
ADT (Admit/Discharge/Transfer) Alerts for Active Patients
When a patient in a primary care physician's panel is admitted to or discharged from a hospital, the practice immediately receives an alert via Metriport's API. This allows care teams to reach out for follow-up within 24 to 48 hours of discharge, which reduces readmissions.
Supporting Care Transitions and Follow-Up Workflows
ArcHouse, a hospice operations platform, is featured in Metriport's case studies. They integrated the API to automate fetching hospital records during referral admissions, saving about one hour per patient referral by eliminating manual record chasing. This allows hospice providers to admit patients faster and provide needed end-of-life care without unnecessary delays.
Quality Measure Reporting and Care Gap Closure
Comprehensive data integration via Metriport supports population health management and quality reporting use cases. Healthcare organizations participating in value-based care programs need a complete view of patient care to accurately report on quality measures and identify care gaps.
Comprehensive Clinical Data for HEDIS and MIPS Reporting
Metriport helps by aggregating data necessary for quality measures from all sources. A health system can use Metriport to pull in vaccination records, cancer screening results, or specialist visits that occurred outside its network. With all data in one place, the organization calculates true performance rates and ensures patients aren't missed.
Supporting Value-Based Care Initiatives and Performance Bonuses
For value-based entities, comprehensive data helps pinpoint patients due for preventive services. This translates to higher quality scores and better outcomes.
EasyHealth leverages Metriport to automatically gather members' medical histories and labs. This enables them to accurately identify who needs outreach for screenings or chronic care interventions.
Referral Management and Specialist Coordination
Metriport significantly streamlines referral management. Referring providers and consulting specialists can have access to each other's documentation through the shared data layer. This eliminates the common scenario where referrals are made but primary care physicians never receive feedback on patient outcomes.
Accessing Consultation Notes and Diagnostic Results
When a primary care physician refers a patient to a specialist, using Metriport the specialist can retrieve the patient's entire relevant history before the consult, reducing duplicate work. The specialist's consult note and any new diagnoses or test results can be fed back through Metriport. This makes them available to the primary doctor and any other providers on the patient's care team.
Closing the Loop on Specialist Referrals
KnownWell is a specialty care provider featured in Metriport's case studies. They used the platform to automate record retrieval within the athenahealth EHR for referred patients. By the time a KnownWell doctor saw a referred patient, they already had all pertinent records available inside their EHR without staff manually requesting and uploading them.
Reducing Duplicate Testing and Imaging Orders
The EDS Clinic is a virtual specialty clinic for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. For them, what used to take days of chasing down records now takes minutes, enabling them to accept last-minute appointments. If the cardiologist can see the patient had a stress test last month via Metriport, they won't need to order another unnecessarily, reducing healthcare costs and patient burden.
Technical Implementation for Healthcare Organizations
Moving from evaluation to production deployment requires careful planning around integration points, security frameworks, and data quality processes. Understanding these technical considerations helps organizations execute successful implementations and maximize value from the platform.
Integration with Existing Clinical Systems
Metriport is designed to slot into existing EHRs, practice management systems, and patient engagement platforms rather than replace them. Organizations have flexibility in choosing integration approaches based on their technical capabilities and workflow requirements.
EMR/EHR Connectivity (Epic, Cerner, Athena, NextGen)
Through the athenahealth Marketplace integration, an athenaOne user can launch Metriport's interface within their EHR and see external records without leaving athenahealth.
Similar apps can be built for other EHRs that support techlike:
- SMART on FHIR
- Custom tabs
- Epic
- Cerner
- NextGen
This allows clinicians to click a button and have Metriport's summary pop up contextually.
Practice Management System Integration
Organizations can also call Metriport's API from their own software systems. For example, a hospital might integrate Metriport with its care management software. So when a care manager opens a patient's profile, behind the scenes a Metriport API call can fetch updated external data and populate the profile.
Patient Engagement Platform Data Synchronization
Patient portals or mobile applications may need access to comprehensive health records beyond what their connected EMR provides. Metriport can supply that additional data layer. This enables patient-facing applications to show unified records that span multiple healthcare organizations and data sources.
API Security and Compliance Framework
Handling sensitive patient health information via an API requires rigorous security and compliance measures. Metriport addresses these requirements through comprehensive security controls and regulatory compliance certifications.
HIPAA and HITRUST Compliance Considerations
Metriport is fully HIPAA-compliant, adhering to rules for protecting PHI. The platform signs Business Associate Agreements with healthcare clients, taking on the responsibility to safeguard any PHI it transmits or stores. The infrastructure follows industry best practices like SOC 2 Type II certification, demonstrating controls in security, availability, and confidentiality.
OAuth 2.0 and Healthcare-Specific Authentication
All data exchanged through Metriport's API is encrypted in transit using HTTPS TLS 1.2 or higher. The API endpoints are secured with OAuth 2.0 authentication. Each data request is authorized to ensure the requester has rights to that patient data. Metriport can support the SMART on FHIR OAuth profile, meaning if launched from an EHR context it inherits the user's authorization.
Audit Logging for Regulatory Requirements
Metriport logs every access and query, including who queried which patient data, what was returned, and when. These logs are available for audits and to meet requirements of regulations like the 21st Century Cures Act's information blocking provisions. When regulators or patients request access logs showing who viewed specific health records, comprehensive audit trails enable timely response.
Data Quality and Validation Workflows
Integrating data from many disparate sources presents challenges due to differences in data quality, format errors, and duplicate entries. Metriport addresses this through built-in data validation and cleansing workflows that ensure data integrity.
Real-Time Data Validation and Error Handling
When data is fetched and converted into FHIR, Metriport runs validation against the FHIR schemas to ensure data fields conform. If a source provides non-standard or unexpected values, Metriport's engine can flag or even correct some of these issues, such as mapping a non-standard code to a known standard if possible, or normalizing units of measure for lab results.
Duplicate Detection and Patient Matching Strategies
A critical function is duplicate detection, where Metriport uses algorithms to identify duplicate records both within a single source's data and across sources. Through the use of unique identifiers when available and similarity matching, Metriport curates a clean, non-redundant dataset. The platform likely employs a combination of deterministic matching using identifiers like MRNs and probabilistic matching using name and date of birth.
Data Lineage Tracking for Clinical Documentation
The platform keeps track of data lineage, essentially tagging each piece of data with its source and timestamp. This transparency builds trust in the data and helps decide which data to reconcile into the home EHR. A doctor seeing an allergy knows via Metriport's interface exactly where that information originated and when it was documented.
Regulatory Compliance and Interoperability Requirements
Understanding how technology platforms address regulatory requirements helps organizations manage risk while meeting federal mandates for data sharing and patient access.
21st Century Cures Act Patient Access Requirements
The 21st Century Cures Act and its subsequent regulations have been a driving force for interoperability in the U.S. healthcare system. The Cures Act Final Rule requires that patients be able to easily access their electronic health information through APIs and that providers and developers do not unreasonably block data sharing.
As of April 2021, the rule went into effect, making it mandatory for healthcare providers to share core medical record information on request. Metriport's platform is well-aligned with this requirement, providing an API that facilitates patient access by aggregating records. By October 2022, the information blocking rules expanded to cover all electronic health information.
TEFCA Integration Readiness and Network Participation
The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) establishes a governance framework for nationwide health information exchange. TEFCA defines how different health information networks should connect and exchange data with one another.
In early 2023, the first six QHINs were accepted, including major networks like CommonWell, eHealth Exchange, and Epic's interoperability network. Metriport is architected to be TEFCA-ready, meaning it can interface with these emerging QHINs and abide by the common agreement policies. As TEFCA implementation progresses, organizations using Metriport can leverage TEFCA connectivity without having to become full participants themselves.
Implementation Strategy and Technical Evaluation
API Technical Assessment
Before deploying Metriport, a healthcare organization should conduct a thorough technical assessment of its current integration architecture and needs. This comprehensive evaluation ensures alignment between platform capabilities and organizational requirements.
Current Integration Architecture Review
This starts with an inventory of data sources and systems, identifying all the EHRs, EMRs, lab systems, radiology systems, and external data feeds the organization deals with. Understanding this landscape helps determine where Metriport can consolidate or replace existing interfaces.
Data Source Inventory and Prioritization
Organizations often find they have dozens of point-to-point interfaces and manual processes that could be simplified. The technical team should evaluate technical requirements such as data types needed, volume of queries, and performance needs to ensure Metriport covers the use cases.
API Rate Limiting and Scalability Considerations
Metriport provides a sandbox environment with synthetic patient data for testing, allowing assessment of how the integration might work in practice. The organization should inquire about Metriport's rate limits and ensure that fits their workflows. For instance, if every morning 100 care managers will batch query 1,000 patients, can the system handle that load concurrently?
Proof of Concept Development
Once the decision is made to pursue Metriport, it's wise to start with a targeted pilot project to demonstrate value and work out kinks on a small scale. The organization should select a pilot use case that promises high impact but is manageable in scope.
Pilot Use Case Selection for Maximum Impact
Organizations should choose one department or workflow, perhaps a care coordination pilot for high-risk patients, or a specialty clinic like cardiology that frequently needs outside records. Another common pilot is to focus on transitions of care, testing Metriport for retrieving hospital discharge summaries into the primary care follow-up process.
Success Metrics and Evaluation Criteria
Define clear success metrics, such as reducing average time to obtain external records from five days to one minute, or saving 30 minutes of staff time per referred patient. These could also be outcome-focused, such as demonstrating 10 percent reduction in duplicate lab orders for new patients.
Integration Timeline and Resource Planning
At the end of the POC, compare the metrics to baseline. Organizations typically find that what took three to five business days to get records now happens instantaneously with Metriport. A small team, often a couple of IT developers and a clinical champion, will set up the Metriport integration in a test environment during the pilot period.
Build vs. Buy Decision Framework
Organizations must decide whether to build custom integration capabilities internally or adopt platforms like Metriport. Building multiple direct interfaces to external systems or networks can be extremely costly, with significant ongoing maintenance requirements.
Custom API Development Costs vs. Metriport Platform
Industry estimates put custom HL7 interface projects in the range of $50,000 up to $750,000 or more for complex multi-system integrations. Those figures illustrate that DIY integration often ends up more expensive due to the many moving parts.
In-House Integration Team Requirements
Additionally, once built, maintaining numerous interfaces requires dedicated integration engineers on staff. A mid-sized hospital might spend half a million dollars per year on interface engine licensing and support, and large systems spend over $1 million annually on interface maintenance.
Long-Term Maintenance and Scalability Considerations
By buying into a managed platform like Metriport, much of that maintenance burden is offloaded to the vendor. With Metriport being open-source, vendor lock-in risk is mitigated, as the code could be self-hosted if needed. The investment in Metriport not only solves current interoperability needs but also aligns with national interoperability initiatives that are unfolding.
Getting Started: Metriport API Evaluation and Implementation
Organizations ready to evaluate Metriport can follow structured approaches that balance thoroughness with reasonable timelines. Understanding the practical steps for evaluation and implementation helps ensure successful adoption and maximizes clinical value from the platform.
API Documentation Review and Technical Assessment
Organizations should start by reviewing Metriport's public documentation and setting up a developer sandbox account. Technical teams can write test queries to explore response structures and demo internally. Contacting reference clients from case studies provides insight into implementation experiences.
Pilot Program Planning for High-Value Use Cases
Organizations should select a specific use case and department based on pressing pain points. Teams define scope, establish success metrics, and monitor progress. Documenting results and presenting findings to leadership builds momentum for broader adoption.
Integration Planning for Clinical Data Teams
Successful pilots transition into full rollout through phased implementation across clinical, technical, and administrative teams. Organizations focus on infrastructure scaling, workflow integration, governance protocols, and ongoing monitoring to embed Metriport into standard clinical workflows.
Final Takeaways
Healthcare data fragmentation creates real consequences for patient care quality and organizational efficiency. When critical medical information remains locked in disconnected systems, clinicians make decisions with incomplete information, patients undergo duplicate testing, and care coordination suffers.
Metriport's unified API platform addresses these challenges by aggregating patient data from multiple sources and delivering it through standardized FHIR interfaces. The open-source approach simplifies integration complexity, reduces development timelines, and improves data completeness compared to traditional point-to-point integration strategies.
For healthcare organizations evaluating API solutions, success depends on aligning technical capabilities with clinical priorities. Understanding which use cases matter most, how platforms address data quality challenges, and whether security and compliance frameworks meet organizational requirements should drive evaluation decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of healthcare organizations benefit most from Metriport integration?
Healthcare organizations managing patient populations across multiple care settings gain the most value. This includes health systems coordinating care across hospitals and ambulatory practices, accountable care organizations tracking patients who receive care from many providers, and specialty practices needing comprehensive patient histories before consultations. Organizations participating in value-based care programs also benefit significantly since quality reporting and care gap closure depend on comprehensive clinical data access.
How does Metriport handle patient consent and data sharing permissions?
Metriport operates within existing healthcare consent frameworks and interoperability regulations. When healthcare organizations query for patient data through the API, appropriate consent and authorization must already exist under HIPAA treatment, payment, and operations provisions or through explicit patient authorization. Organizations implementing Metriport remain responsible for ensuring their use cases comply with applicable privacy regulations.
What data formats does Metriport support for different integration needs?
The platform provides clinical data in three primary formats. FHIR R4 format delivers structured, standardized resources that modern healthcare applications can consume programmatically. C-CDA documents provide structured clinical summaries meeting regulatory requirements and legacy system compatibility needs. PDF versions of original clinical documents enable human review when source documentation validation is necessary.
How does Metriport pricing compare to building custom integrations internally?
Organizations should compare Metriport costs against the total cost of ownership for internal development, including initial build effort, ongoing maintenance, security updates, compliance management, and expansion to additional data sources. Custom HL7 interface projects can range from $50,000 to $750,000 or more for complex implementations, with additional annual maintenance costs potentially reaching half a million dollars for mid-sized hospitals.
Can Metriport integrate with our existing EHR system and workflow?
Metriport supports integration with major EHR platforms including Epic, Cerner, Athena, and NextGen through various mechanisms. The platform offers embedded applications that display aggregated patient data directly within EHR interfaces, API endpoints for custom integration through interface engines or middleware platforms, and standalone dashboard access. Most organizations find that Metriport can work alongside their existing systems rather than requiring replacement of current infrastructure.
James founded Invene with a 20-year plan to build the world's leasing partner for healthcare innovation. A Forbes Next 1000 honoree, James specializes in helping mid-market and enterprise healthcare companies build AI-driven solutions with measurable PnL impact. Under his leadership, Invene has worked with 20 of the Fortune 100, achieved 22 FDA clearances, and launched over 400 products for their clients. James is known for driving results at the intersection of technology, healthcare, and business.
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