Why Use SMART?

The SMART vision of substitutable healthcare applications holds many benefits for app developers, healthcare providers, patients, healthcare institutions and public health.

App Developers

  • Free and open source tools and resources simplify app creation
  • Open App Gallery exposes innovative apps to potential customers
  • Reduce cost and complexity of integrating with customers’ EHR systems

Healthcare Providers and Patients

  • Apps empower users, rather than only technology vendors or government committees, to decide which health IT products are beneficial and valuable
  • Add new capabilities to existing systems, for example to visualize risks, trends, and trajectories
  • Integrate new data into systems, mashing up clinical records with external data sources and incorporating new flows of data from sensors, devices, and patient reports

Healthcare Institutions

  • Improve return on EHR investment by streamlining internal EHR customization projects
  • Simplify the integration of best of breed components into existing systems
  • Ability to easily draw on a library of innovate apps encourages market competition on quality, cost, and usability

Public Health

  • Apps can transfer ideas, functionality, and workflow all in one package – a good app, distributed widely, could reshape practice overnight
  • Decision support can be updated without the need to customize for each EHR, supporting rapid response during outbreaks and as guidelines change