Aviary, an online image editing application (which is, in itself, extremely cool) just introduced an API, allowing easy embedding of its editor in a range of other web applications. To my knowledge, this is the first embeddable application of its type, and I’ve already come up with a couple of potential applications in the healthcare environment, despite the entirely unsurprising lack of DICOMM imaging support.

The challenge with relying on an external partner to provide core application functionality. There are HIPAA issues too, since the Aviary web site defaults to some pretty agressive sharing. But there’s nothing there that can’t be resolved, but there are still real concerns about integrating functionality from startups into your own products and services. When the startup sent you a disk (and put the source code in escrow) that was one thing – but when you’re relying on them to provide a service, it’s an entirely different kind of risk. I’ve reached out to them about some of these issues, and I’ll be interested in hearing what, if anything, I hear back.

But still, pretty neat stuff. Here’s a screenshot, and you can play with the application itself on their web site:

Aviary Releases API: Add Image Editing to Your Website – ReadWriteWeb.