Building Custom Apps with FileMaker, Ottomatic and Five for the Medical Insurance Industry
Learn How Heritage Medical Consultants Leverages Five, FileMaker and Ottomatic to Build Connected Business Applications
Custom-built software applications developed in Five and Claris FileMaker let Florida-based Heritage Medical digitally manage its medical insurance verification business.
The Business Challenge
Technology is changing the medical insurance industry: paper-based forms and claims are increasingly digitized, improving processing times and offering doctors, practitioners, and other medical professionals a faster way to document and share information.
Heritage Medical Consultants processes and verifies hundreds of insurance claims from medical practitioners and other staff daily. How can Heritage Medical receive and process insurance claims promptly?
An internal app, written in FileMaker and hosted on Ottomatic, as well as an external web portal, developed in Five, let Heritage Medical digitize its workflow, streamline its operations, and provide an exceptional experience to its partners.
Using FileMaker & Ottomatic to Create Modern Business Software
As its internal software, Heritage Medical uses a custom-built FileMaker application that stores and processes data about patients, insurance requests, and product orders.
Developed by Jonathan Marcus, a FileMaker developer working with Sureguard, a medical services provider, Heritage’s internal staff uses the software to store and manage data about patients, insurance requests, and product orders.
The application allows medical practitioners to submit treatment for prior authorization, which is then handled by a third party. The system supports parsing of documents, PDF report generation, and interactive dashboards.
The FileMaker application is hosted on Ottomatic, the modern FileMaker cloud hosting platform developed by Proof+Geist and winner of the Claris Innovation Award 2023.
Ottomatic provides an integrated suite of exceptional tools for performance and monitoring, security, and DevOps, as well as OttoFMS, a comprehensive server management tool.
Ottomatic further supports the easy setup of the FileMaker Data API and OData, which enable third-party web applications to retrieve data from and send data to a FileMaker database.
Explainer: What is OData and How Does It Work with FileMaker?
OData stands for the Open Data Protocol, a standard for exposing and exchanging data between applications. OData builds on top of the REST framework and its protocol is based on familiar HTTP. OData returns data in JSON format.
Through simple URIs, OData can be used to query a FileMaker Pro database. Each URI identifies a point in the FileMaker data model. OData’s query language resembles SQL, making it a powerful and easily implementable mechanism to exchange data between applications.
To use OData, no additional software needs to be installed on the client to work with data. The only thing that needs to be done is to enable OData Access in FileMaker or OttoFMS. OData can replace ODBC and JDBC for most uses and is fully supported by Five as a data source.
Building a Web Portal with Five
In addition to the internal FileMaker application, a custom web portal developed in Five, is used by Heritage Medical’s business partners.
A cloud-native web application, the application developed in Five can be accessed from anyone, anywhere, and at any time. End users do not require a license from Five, as Five charges per application, not per user.
Five connects directly to the FileMaker database using the OData API. Data flows seamlessly from Five to FileMaker, from medical practitioners in the field, working at nursing facilities and clinics, to Heritage Medical’s internal staff.
The portal’s front end is responsive by default. No additional code is required for the application to render well on mobile, tablet, or desktop.
Statements
Ernest Koe, CEO of Proof+Geist, noted, “We are delighted to see the success of Sureguard and Heritage Medical Consultants! We designed Ottomatic to handle all the gnarly bits involved in delivering modern FileMaker applications in the cloud such as deployment, and security, so that developers and businesses like Sureguard and Heritage can focus on solving problems and building great solutions.”
Jonathan Marcus commented: “Our primary objectives in developing this system were to provide a seamless and user-friendly web interface and to enable numerous concurrent connections without the limitations and costs associated with traditional FileMaker licensing.
By leveraging the capabilities of Five and OData, we were able to create a highly responsive and accessible web portal, avoiding the performance and scalability issues often encountered with WebDirect. Additionally, our decision to use Ottomatic for hosting was driven by our priority on security and HIPAA compliance. This approach has significantly enhanced the user experience for Heritage Medical Consultant’s partners and internal staff, ensuring efficient and cost-effective operations.”
Dominik Keller, co-founder and CEO of Five, said: “Five, FileMaker and Ottomatic create a powerful suite of technologies for rapidly building and deploying custom software solutions for both internal and external users. With OData, the data exchange between Five and FileMaker is seamless, instantaneous, and secure, ensuring smooth integration and real-time connectivity. We are thrilled that Five has been selected as the platform to develop and launch Heritage Medical’s web portal, and we look forward to supporting their continued success.”