Application programming interfaces give access to data created by others, enabling a computer programmer or someone working on a computer to call up another program and get it to do a particular task, explains Brian Murphy, an industry analyst at Chilmark Research.
It is a technology the healthcare industry desperately needs and is slowly moving toward, he contends.
APIs are not new, having been invented in the 1950s. But Google, Facebook and other social media put them on the map in recent years. Most notably, APIs power all the apps on your smartphone.
