Intro

Athenahealth offers two options for receiving data from their EMR. They offer either the Data Warehouse Feed or Data View. This post will describe each option and the difference between the two.

Data Warehouse Feed

The data warehouse feed is athena’s traditional data offering. It has been around for a quite some time and functions like most traditional data feeds. Data is delivered on a daily basis in flat files to an FTP site. 

When first setting up this option Athena will send a larger set of files for your initial load. These files contain all of your data back to when you implemented Athena. Depending on the size of your business, these files can be very large and difficult to process if you don’t have the proper tools. Everyday after you will receive daily update files. The daily update files contain data that has been added or changed since the prior data delivery. Most of the time these files are very small in size, but sometimes Athena will update most of the records in your dataset so these can randomly be the same size as your initial load files.

Now that you have the data in flat files it is up to you to load them into a system you can report from. For smaller clients it is definitely possible to use a reporting tool directly on top of the flat files, but this is an uncommon scenario. From what I have seen most folks will load these files into a relational database and layer their reporting tool on that.

Data View

Athena launched their new data product in the last few years named Data View. This new product takes a modern approach to data delivery. Using the Snowflake data platform they are able to provide a functioning database for clients to use.

This product is updated on a daily basis as well. Daily updates are done by athena and are available to you automatically. The number of rows updated daily can vary. Generally it is a manageable update, but occasionally the majority of the data can get updated.

Snowflake offers a web interface clients can use to query and export data right in their favorite web browser. With snowflake’s explosion in popularity you can also connect most reporting\etl tools directly to the database. Snowflake also offers an ODBC driver you can download. As an initial step I have seen many folks use the ODBC driver to setup Data View as a linked server on their existing SQL Server.

You can read more on the Athena developer page.

Comparison

Product Updates

The Data View dataset started out the same as the Data Warehouse Feed. In the last 2 years athena has invested in expanding the dataset significantly. Data View usually receives an update once a month. These updates add new tables and add columns to existing tables. Some updates have included access to queries behind athena built reports. In comparison the Data Warehouse Feed is static. It does not change unless you go through an upgrade project. Majority of development efforts have shifted to Data View so you will not see significant changes to the flat files anytime soon.

With automatic monthly updates to Data View there is no effort on the client side to stay on the latest version. The Data Warehouse Feed requires a project and planned upgrade to get onto the latest release. Monthly updates that you don’t have to put in an effort for vs an upgrade project every couple years is a win in my book.

Data Delivery

Having data delivered via flat files vs a cloud database is really a simple comparison from my point of view. With the Data Warehouse Feed flat files, the client is responsible for the hardware\software necessary to take advantage of these files. If you have obsolete hardware and dated software you are going to have a bad time here. On top of that you also need someone with the skillset to make all that function. The ready to query database Data View provides is fast, reliable, and online from day 1 of implementation.

Timing

This is one area the Data Warehouse Feed comes out on top. The files are generally available early in the morning where Data View has an SLA of 8AM EST. In my experience the Data View data is generally available well before 8 but it is still a couple hours behind the Data Warehouse Feed. If daily operational reporting is critical for you this might be something to consider.

Conclusion

athenahealth provides two great options for accessing your data. Either option grants you access to a robust dataset that is useful for gaining insights. Data View is definitely the best way to move forward with accessing this data. It is an excellent product that athena is clearly invested in improving. Data View provides a fast and reliable way to access your data with minimal time investment required.