ELLKAY is a healthcare data orchestration company. It orchestrates interfaces, networks and data for healthcare organizations, laboratories, payers and health IT vendors, with 58,000+ practices connected, 400+ hospitals connected and 770+ labs connected for orders and results interfaces.
In a September 2026 interview with Pulse 2.0, President & CEO, Ajay Kapare described the problem the company exists to solve. Every setting ELLKAY serves faces its own challenges, but the root issue is shared.
"Although each of these settings has its own challenges, they all wrestle with the same underlying problem: disconnected data that's hard to trust and expensive to keep moving," Kapare told Pulse 2.0.
What Does ELLKAY Do?
ELLKAY gives healthcare organizations one partner accountable for how their data moves, from the systems that create it to the people and applications that rely on it. Its platform is built to replace a patchwork of point solutions with a single point of accountability.
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ELLKAY works across hospitals, ambulatory care providers, laboratories, health IT vendors and payers. That reach is backed by 750+ PM and EHR systems connected for demographics data across 1,100 versions, and 4,000+ reusable interface templates and workflows.
"With more than 4,000 reusable integration templates, we stopped solving the same problem twice a long time ago," Kapare said.
Who Is Accountable for Healthcare Data Across Systems and Vendors?
Most healthcare organizations hold an enormous amount of data spread across a growing web of systems, applications and vendors. Each vendor manages its own piece. None of them owns the handoffs between the pieces.
"The trouble is that no one is accountable for making it all work together," Kapare said. Connectivity solves part of this. It moves data from one system to another. What it does not do is make sure the data that arrives is complete, trusted and usable where it lands.
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The connectivity-versus-orchestration distinction is covered in depth in Beyond Data Connectivity: Why Orchestration Is Healthcare's Next Era.
How Did ELLKAY Grow From Lab Connectivity to Healthcare Data Orchestration?
"Our company began primarily in lab connectivity and then expanded into data migration and archiving," Kapare said.
Over the last decade, ELLKAY expanded across care settings and added capabilities as customer needs changed, moving from connecting systems to coordinating data across systems, networks and workflows. Three milestones mark that shift.
- National network infrastructure. ELLKAY supports the infrastructure behind CommonWell, a Designated QHIN under TEFCA. The network connects more than 261 million individuals across 125,000+ provider sites.
- MEDITECH-as-a-Service. MEDITECH selected ELLKAY to supply interface engine services for MEDITECH-as-a-Service. "A partner of that size doesn't hand you their customers' connectivity unless they've watched you operate," Kapare said.
- The White House. Kapare was invited to the CMS Digital Health Ecosystem launch at the White House. "And getting invited to the White House for the CMS Digital Health Ecosystem launch, that was a moment where I realized the industry conversation had finally caught up to what we've been building for two decades," Kapare said.
What Does Consolidating Multiple EHRs Onto Epic Involve?
San Ysidro Health, a nonprofit healthcare organization, was moving from multiple EHR systems to Epic. That meant two jobs at once: migrating and archiving legacy data, and building an interoperability framework to connect Epic with labs, HIEs, third-party applications, immunization registries and other systems.
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The Result:
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"Just as important, we helped them build a scalable data infrastructure that can grow and evolve along with them," Kapare said.
What Is Making Healthcare Data Harder To Manage?
Many healthcare organizations are adding complexity to their data environments from several directions at once: launching AI initiatives, navigating mergers and acquisitions, extending EHR platforms to new affiliates and clinics, joining national networks, adopting more digital health applications and keeping up with regulation.
"These are all important steps forward, but each can add another vendor, interface, workflow, or compliance requirement that somebody must manage," Kapare said.
Multiply that across an enterprise and the result is hundreds of applications and vendors, thousands of interfaces, millions of messages moving daily, and countless downstream workflows that depend on every exchange landing correctly.
AI raises the stakes most. An AI model is only as useful as the data underneath it, which is why a data foundation has to come before AI.
How Is ELLKAY Different From Other Healthcare Data Vendors?
Kapare points to three differences.
- Scope. "We're not simply solving one piece of the data puzzle; we're connecting the pieces through a single platform to make the data meaningful and usable," he said.
- Reach across sectors. ELLKAY works across hospitals, ambulatory practices, laboratories, payers and health IT vendors, so it sees how data has to move between parts of healthcare, not only within one setting. Customers start from an established network of connections, interfaces and templates instead of from scratch.
- Accountability. "We deliver on our promises, remain accountable for the work we do, and stay closely connected to our clients as their needs change," Kapare said. "And when things don't go as planned, we have open conversations about that."
What Is Next for ELLKAY?
ELLKAY plans to keep expanding its data orchestration capabilities and help healthcare organizations activate their data for today's challenges and what comes next.
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Ajay Kapare's comments are drawn from an interview with Pulse 2.0, published September 23, 2026. Read the full interview at Pulse 2.0.
ELLKAY orchestrates healthcare data end-to-end so the right information reaches the right place at the right time. Read Ajay Kapare on why AI needs a data foundation first, see how MultiCare scaled EHR migration from 3 hospitals to 18, or meet the ELLKAY leadership team.
Our technology is designed to bring together data from disparate sources, translate it into trusted information, and make sure it gets where it needs to be when it needs to be there, with strong security and governance underneath it all.
"That requires more than connectivity, which reliably moves data. It requires orchestration, which ensures that data is trusted, timely, and ready for use."
"We partnered with San Ysidro's team across their entire journey, migrating and preserving their data, building and managing integrations, and ensuring critical information remained accessible throughout the transition."
"Whether it be sunsetting old systems, onboarding new ones, or creating a strong data foundation for transformative AI projects, we will be there, evolving alongside our partners and helping them make the most of their data."
