With our Integration Pilot well underway, we’ve got some news about its future as well as some reflections on what we’ve learnt so far.

Extending Integration Pilot for Outcomes Star Online to December 2024

To ensure we can fully trial the API endpoints and put our design decisions to the test in as many different scenarios as possible, we are extending our Integration Pilot through 2024.

This will mean organisations using the Outcomes Star Online can access and use our Partner API free of charge through 2024, to integrate with any other primary software they use.

A recap on our Partner API for Outcomes Star Online

Outcomes Star Online’s Partner API went live in April 2023, and since then we’ve had conversations with around 50 different organisations about how it can work for their practitioners, other stakeholders and of course, the people they support.

The design of our Partner API is based on these desired outcomes:

Any and all primary software that can use APIs can use our API.
Outcomes Stars are completed on our platform using our visual and engaging interface aligned with best Star practice.
Data-entry and login duplication is reduced as much as possible to make life easier for practitioners.
We support a single point of truth and easy access to key Outcomes Star data within the primary software.

We plan to continue to develop and expand our Partner API – in this initial stage, we have 3 key features available, plus Single Sign On for both Microsoft and Google (NB SSO will be launched separately for all Outcomes Star organisations in January 2024 – watch this space!):

Summary of progress so far

With many early-stage conversations underway, we have made some exciting progress including:

A sandbox build with a person-centred care planning software provider and a dynamic Northern Ireland-based charity
A sandbox build with a team of developers making a custom solution for an innovative education charity
Analysis and planning projects with a number of leading UK national charities, mostly working with their own custom software or Microsoft Dynamics platforms

We are hoping to onboard more organisations into the sandbox and link up to the Live environment in early 2024.

What’s next for Outcomes Star Online integration

Interoperability is a completely new area for our organisation, and we’re still learning about its challenges and opportunities!

For example, there are lots of questions we are still asking ourselves and looking to learn more about:

Can we develop and maintain ‘middleware’ solutions that remove the burden of custom code on the primary software/client organisation side – for example, for ‘enterprise’ platforms like Salesforce and Dynamics, and for the bigger sector-specialist platforms that provide their own APIs?
For UK NHS settings, should we be focusing on direct integration with individual pieces of software used in a region, or should we be focusing on Shared Care Record integration?
Our current endpoints don’t include an individuals Star data in ‘raw data’ format (it is available in a user-friendly PDF or in aggregated data formats.) How can we provide this in a way that adds value and is usable by different primary software?

If you are working on your own interoperability opportunities and challenges, or if you have any insight or information you could share about the above, please do get in touch.

When we launched the new and improved Outcomes Star Online platform in 2020, we were aware that what we were launching was a Minimum Viable Product.

We knew it was only the start of where we could use digital technology to help people get the most out of the Outcomes Star.

Following a year of migrating over 1000 organisations from the old platform to the new, we’ve been constantly moving forward with the platform, working closely with our technology partners QES, including:

Filling in gaps that we weren’t able to get to in the initial development (eg action plan PDF downloads)
Introducing features to support better management of data (eg configurable practitioner permissions and restricted access to records, and depersonalisation of dormant records)
Ensuring a strong foundation of compliance for information governance, cyber security and clinical safety (eg new IG statements for UK and Australia, and bringing in a Clinical Safety Officer to set up our Clinical Risk Management System).

We’ve also been working on 2 big projects – integration, and an overhaul of the ‘Live Completion’ feature. Here’s an update on those projects and some of the things we’ve learnt along the way.

Integration

We are clear that the role of Outcomes Star Online is not to be a fully customisable, comprehensive case management system or electronic patient record system. Although for some organisations it may be their central record system, our focus is purely on the Outcomes Star and supporting best practice use across our client organisations.

We have also learnt the hard way that although on the surface it seems simple to allow organisations to build their own digital versions of Stars, and in some cases works well, often it is very difficult to achieve a user experience that matches up to best practice and supports the values underpinning the Star.

Therefore, we knew when launching the new platform that we absolutely had to offer integration with other systems – but at the time, we didn’t really know how to do that. We didn’t know what kind of integration people wanted, or what technology the other systems needed to be ‘talked to’, or where to draw the lines around what should happen within Outcomes Star Online and what we should support in other systems. With over 1000 organisations using all sorts of software and managing that software in different ways, we had to decide where to start – with something that delivered a lot for one setting, or something that delivered something basic but for as many different circumstances as possible.

Following a period of research, design and development, we were delighted to launch our Partner API and our Integration Pilot in April 2023, delivering a ‘Phase 1’ of universally useful endpoints designed to reduce duplication of data entry for practitioners and support a ‘single point of truth’ in primary systems.

We’re in the early stages of working with around 10 different organisations in the Integration Pilot so far and looking forward to having some case studies to share soon. To find out more information about that have a look at our Integration page here.

“Live Completion” overhaul

Alongside the more technical side of the API development, we also knew we wanted to continue to improve the user experience around completing Stars.

For the last year we’ve been doing some exciting user research and design with Usertopia to look at the ‘Live Star Completion’ feature the pages designed to be shared with someone being supported to complete a Star collaboratively without paper. Here you can see an image of one of our potential alternative designs in action.

With a focus on accessibility, as well as on supporting best Star practice, we’ve uncovered some useful learnings, including:

Lack of wifi when out and about prevents people from using the feature, so an offline solution would be valuable
The lack of imagery and the volume of text on the screen all in one go makes it harder to digest
Rather than just completing a Star, people would like to be able to complete action plans collaboratively and look back over completed Stars to show the visual of change over time

We’re just starting to move from design into development, working closely with Usertopia and QES and planning to collaborate with our research community of Outcomes Star Online practitioners to test out our plans as we go. If you’re interested in finding out more or helping us with this important development, sign up here.

Onwards and upwards

As well as the big projects above we’re committed to continually improving the user experience and technology of Outcomes Star Online. If you have any feedback or requests, or any questions or issues with the platform, please contact us on support@staronline.org.uk.

Tag: software

Making integration work for organisations using Outcomes Stars™