Brendan Keeler, Head of Product at Flexpa and Health API Guy

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 Brandan’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?

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Where to find Brendan Keeler:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendan-keeler/

• X: https://twitter.com/healthapiguy

• Substack: https://substack.com/@healthapiguy

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Where to find Angela and Omar:

• Angela Suthrave

  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-suthrave/

  • X: https://twitter.com/ASuthrave

  • email: angela@concepttocare.com

• Omar Mousa

  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omarmousa/

  • X: https://twitter.com/OmarMHealth

  • email: omar@concepttocare.com

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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

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