Platform vs. Point Solutions: Why Health Systems Can’t Afford Fragmentation Anymore

If there’s one thing the last three years at Adonis have taught me, it’s that coherence is everything in healthcare.

When a doctor and patient are aligned, diagnoses are faster, more accurate, and sometimes life-saving. When providers and payers are aligned, reimbursement flows without the stress and delays that often choke the system. And when health systems themselves are aligned, across departments, technology, and data—the result is a kind of operational harmony that improves care, reduces costs, and protects staff from burnout.

At Adonis, we’ve seen this truth up close while building our revenue cycle management platform. Helping tens of thousands of providers get paid faster and with less friction has made one thing clear: fragmentation doesn’t just slow operations down, it drains resources, burns out staff, and, ultimately, impacts patient care.

A Brief Look Back: The Promise of Integration

Not too long ago, electronic health records (EHRs) promised to solve this problem. They offered a vision of integration, pulling together what had been scattered across dozens of point solutions. Instead of one tool for physician notes, another for imaging, another for test results, and another for billing, health systems could rely on a unified system with modules designed to work together.

Anyone who has implemented or worked with an EHR knows it can come with its own complexities, but regardless, it was a massive step toward simplicity.

Fast forward to today, and it feels like the pendulum is swinging back.

The Quiet Return of Point Solutions

Health systems are once again layering on software at a dizzying pace. To fill the gaps left by EHRs, leaders are buying point solutions: one for patient communications, one for imaging, one for scheduling, one for prescriptions, one for payments. The list goes on and on.

A recent survey revealed that 60% of health systems now use more than 50 unique software solutions, and nearly a quarter use as many as 500. That’s not innovation, it’s digital whack-a-mole. The cost of managing this complexity is staggering, not only in dollars but in the toll it takes on staff, workflows, and ultimately, patients.

It raises a sobering question: Are we actually moving forward, or are we rebuilding the same tangled complexity we once worked so hard to simplify?

The Hidden Costs of Fragmentation

On paper, point solutions look like quick wins. Plug them in, solve a problem, move on. But the reality is messier, and the hidden costs add up fast.

Integration overhead: Each new solution demands custom development to connect with legacy systems like EHRs. That means hiring specialized IT talent, mapping workflows, and budgeting for ongoing maintenance. None of it is cheap.

Compatibility issues: Even with standards like HL7 and FHIR, systems rarely align perfectly. Vendors bring their own quirks, architectures, and data structures. What should be plug-and-play often turns into months of mapping and harmonization.

Security risks: Each tool is another doorway into sensitive patient data. In a world of HIPAA and other strict regulations, every integration introduces new vulnerabilities and new compliance burdens.

Siloed data: Point solutions operate in bubbles, trapping critical information. The result? Staff waste hours chasing down records, flipping between systems, and piecing together fragments that should have been seamless from the start.

Workflow disjointedness: Clinicians and staff juggle multiple logins and interfaces, constantly switching between tools. Every toggle slows them down, breaks their focus, and increases the risk of error. The more fragmented the workflow, the greater the risk of mistakes that affect real people in real ways.

Add burnout into the mix, and you have a system that is inefficient at best and unsustainable at worst.

Why Platforms Matter

At the simplest level, the difference between a platform and a point solution comes down to scope and connectivity.

• A point solution solves one problem in isolation. It might handle appointment scheduling, or patient messaging, or claims scrubbing, but it doesn’t naturally connect to the other systems around it. Each point solution creates another island of data and another set of workflows for staff to manage.

• A platform, by contrast, is built to integrate across multiple functions. Instead of solving one problem in a vacuum, it creates a connected environment where data, workflows, and insights flow seamlessly across departments and use cases. Platforms don’t just fix pain points. They re-architect how work gets done.

This is exactly what we’ve built at Adonis for revenue cycle management.

Revenue cycle touches everything from patient intake to claims submission, denial management, collections, and reporting. In most health systems today, those steps are scattered across multiple point solutions that don’t talk to each other. The result: fragmented data, manual work, delayed payments, and a frustrating experience for both providers and patients.

Adonis takes a platform approach. By unifying the entire revenue cycle on one connected system, we eliminate the silos that make getting paid so painful. Clinical data, insurance data, and financial workflows are all brought together, giving providers a single source of truth. That means faster claims, fewer denials, and dramatically less time spent chasing down information.

When I say platforms matter, this is why. They replace fragmented, brittle systems with coherent ones that work together by design. And in healthcare—where lives, livelihoods, and sustainability are all on the line—that coherence isn’t just nice to have. It’s essential.

In a recent panel we hosted at our office, Sameer Sethi, Chief AI Officer at Hackensack Meridian Health, spoke to the importance of AI orchestration in healthcare. Take a look at a snippet from that conversation:

Looking to the Future

The real promise of platforms today is not just efficiency, it’s the breakthroughs of tomorrow.

When systems are connected, precision medicine becomes more attainable. Public health infrastructure becomes stronger and more resilient. Responses to crises become faster and more coordinated. Treatments become more personalized. And data becomes a tool for scaling care instead of a barrier to it.

At Adonis, we’ve seen firsthand how a platform model can transform revenue cycle. But I believe the same principles will extend across every area of healthcare operations. Coherence will replace fragmentation, and platforms will replace patchwork point solutions.

Because in the end, every minute clinicians and staff spend wrestling with disconnected systems is a minute taken away from the only thing that really matters: the patient.

As always, thank you for taking the time to read. Until next time!

Best,

Akash Magoon
Co-Founder and CEO
Adonis