We Are the Use Case People

Last week at the Civitas conference, someone stopped by our booth, looked us over, and proclaimed, “Oh…you are the use case people!”

I was so happy to hear that because, yes, that is a big part of who we are and how we approach this work. We talk a lot about use cases, but more importantly, we build our work around them. The fact that people are starting to associate Converge Health with that approach tells me the message is landing.

So why is that such a big deal?

If you’ve been around since the “dawn of HIEs,” you probably remember the gold rush around 2009 and 2010. There was funding, there was momentum, and there was a race to build infrastructure. States and regions stood up HIEs with the expectation that once the technology existed, participation and value would follow.

Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t.

A lot of hospitals and other organizations found themselves being asked to help sustain HIE infrastructure without always being able to point to a clear, tangible return. At the same time, HIEs ran into a classic capacity-building challenge: organizations wanted to wait until enough other providers were connected before they committed. Of course, when everyone is waiting for everyone else, it is hard to reach the point where enough meaningful data is flowing to make participation truly valuable.

That is where use cases change the conversation.

It turns out you cannot simply stand up an interoperability platform and assume people will beat a path to your door because the technology exists. They need a reason to use it. They need you to solve a problem for them.

That might mean saving them money, reducing administrative burden, eliminating phone calls and faxes, helping them identify a patient who needs follow-up, improving transitions of care, supporting a crisis response, or giving a provider information they have never had at the point of care before. Whatever the use case is, it has to matter to the people doing the work.

It also has to fit into their workflow.

That last part is important because I think the term “use case” sometimes gets reduced to a title on a slide. “Reducing ED readmissions” is not really a use case by itself. Neither is “improving care coordination.” Those are goals. The real work starts when you dig underneath them.

Who is actually using the information? What problem are they trying to solve? What data do they need? Where will that data come from? When do they need it? How will it show up in their workflow? What action should happen once they receive it? Are there privacy, consent, or security considerations? Who has to participate for the use case to work? And, importantly, how will we know whether it was successful?

Those questions turn a broad idea into something you can actually build.

They create a blueprint for the technical team because now you know what data needs to move, where it needs to go, and how quickly it needs to get there. They create a blueprint for governance because they surface the decisions that have to be made around access, consent, participation, and accountability. They help identify which organizations need to be at the table and what each of them needs to contribute.

They also make adoption much easier because the conversation stops being, “Please participate in our HIE,” and becomes, “Here is the problem we can help you solve.” That is a very different conversation.

One of the reasons we talk so much about the “last mile” of interoperability is that there is a huge difference between data being technically available and data actually making a difference. You can have millions of records flowing through an exchange and still have providers asking, “What does this actually do for me?”

A good use case answers that question.

And once you solve one meaningful problem, it becomes much easier to build on that success. A hospital that sees value from an ED notification may start thinking about transitions of care. A behavioral health provider that gains access to clinical information may begin thinking about crisis workflows. An EMS agency may realize the same infrastructure could support field-based care. A community organization may start identifying opportunities to close referral loops or improve coordination with healthcare partners.

That is how interoperability grows in a way that feels useful rather than abstract. You do not have to convince everyone to buy into a massive vision all at once. You solve something real, demonstrate the value, and then build from there.

That is also why use cases are so important to sustainability. When organizations can see what they are getting, understand how it helps them, and point to measurable value, it becomes much easier to justify continued participation and investment.

There is still enormous investment happening in HIEs, health data utilities, community information exchanges, statewide data initiatives, and other interoperability infrastructure. That infrastructure matters, and good technology absolutely matters.

But technology has never really been the finish line.

The more important question is what we are going to do with it.

What problem are we solving? Who are we solving it for? What information do they need? How will it fit into the way they actually work? What barriers will get in the way? And what will be different when we are successful?

Those are the questions we love working through.

So when someone walked up to our booth and said, “Oh…you are the use case people!” I took it as a pretty big compliment.

Because yes...yes we are.

And I think that is exactly where the real work of interoperability begins.