The API Strategy

Today's mobile and digital technologies have big influenced in our way of life and work. Consumers do business with all kinds of companies, organizations and agencies via desktops, tablets, mobile devices and many other channels. We expect to be able to shop, schedule, (medical or financial) consult, buy tickets or update our administration at any moment and every location . Brand experience across different channels must be deliver a unified experience and research to consumer behaviour does not stop at the door of a (web) store or when leaving a website.

As digital involvement and expectations of consumers increase, businesses pressure is increasing to approach consumers efficiently, and profitability in a hyper connected world of systems. Having a feasible digital strategy can make the difference between companies and their competition.

If we look at the medical world, we are dealing with HL7/FHIR (Fast Health Interoperability Resources). This is the facto-standard for data exchange in healthcare. As patients move around the healthcare ecosystem, their electronic health records must be available, discoverable, and understandable. Supported by health insurance companies, the Dutch behavioural healthcare sector has joined forces to develop a shared integration language and service to share data between eHealth interventions and eHealth platforms. Further, to support automated clinical decision support and other machine-based processing, the data must also be structured and standardized.

When we look at the government, we are dealing with all type of registers, like data.overheid.nl or mijn.bigregister.nl. The data.overheid.nl is accessible via the standard CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network) API and enables third parties to develop and connect their own applications on various themes, such as traffic information, nature and environment, governance and other government affairs.

When we look at the financial world, we are dealing with the Payment Service Directive (PSD2). This is about the implementation of EU directives, which ensures the uniformity of payment transactions on the Internet more convenient, cheaper and safer in the EU. The EU wants to promote competition in the payment system and standardize payment products by standardizing the rules for banks and payment service providers.

All functionality and data are offered as Application Programming Interface (API). An API is a software intermediary (or set of protocols) that allows applications to talk to each other. Developers of these APIs also use them. APIs has changed how we think about building applications and how we deploy software. The largest impact of this change is the Time to Market. Business processes and business information are now available for other parties. On this basis, new services can be developed or existing can be extended. For example, suppliers who produce products for national or regional providers (adoption of APIs and brand loyalty). Or developers who offers APIs for third-party developers to extend their platform.

This creates improved, new and more efficient applications based on the functionality and data of (regional and national) target groups. As a result, innovation and economic growth.

Contemporary APIs that are realized are based on the REST (Representational State Transfer) architecture principle. REST is not a standard but an architectural concept for addressing web services. REST uses standards such as HTTP for transport and XML or JSON for the content of messages. An API can also use other standards, such as SOAP. REST is known for its compactness, simplicity and innovative way of exchanging information and SOAP is known for its formality, reliability and complexity.

HL7/FHIR enables a granular way to exchange data by using RESTful style approach. FHIR has wider applicability than the standards that we have had in in the medical world until now for integration and interoperability needs. HL7/FHIR is expected to help providers achieve meaningful use in a more efficient way. FHIR and REST APIs are also expected to change the health care ecosystem by encouraging innovation and digital health and enabling the creation of "smart apps".

Especially where many companies, organizations and agencies want to collaborate and share information in an easy and accessible way, (FHIR) REST APIs are very suitable. This technique has a lot of knowledge in the market, and can be implemented quick and easily. This does not mean to transfer completely to REST APIs. SOAP APIs also have many advantages and is commonly used. Where reliability and formality is important, SOAP APIs are more preferable for message exchanges.

REST APIs have become popular through the emergence of variety of channels where organizations can extend their services via social media, mobile devices, tablets and the increasing integration of services into all kinds of online-devices (IoT). Simplicity, usability and scalability are important because many developers use 'each other' API-products and REST APIs are very suitable for this. It is easier to achieve interoperability between users, different services and organizations or agencies. The movement towards Cloud computing also contributes to the use of APIs.

APIs must be easy and efficient to use where parties collaborate and share information in an easy, uniform and secure way. This is how we should encourage the use of APIs. We need an API strategy to create a uniform basis for different target groups. This strategy should be based on the use of an API as a generic product and explains the structure, functionality and security of APIs and the requirements that are set for each target group. The goal of such a 'API Strategy' is to offer a generic and broad-based API experience to various users. The following aspects are important here, such as the way of addressing (URI), underlying relations and dependencies, security (encryption and authentication), granularity of resources, versioning, filtering, sorting, searching, pagination, error handling and documentation.

If all this has been worked out, the next integration phase, the implementation of uniform APIs, in the ICT world can really begin. So customers can concentrate on business data anywhere at any moment.

Bernard Stibbe