Part 1 of a 2 part series on EMR’s and Software as a Service.
In a recent post on KevinMD, Dr. Bilhartz outlined challenges healthcare providers face when working with software. Health care providers are spending more and more time in the digital world and less time interacting with patients.
In the early 2000’s, the University of Michigan Health Care System was still using a homegrown web based EMR (CareWeb) which functioned well for 3 hospitals, 120 clinics, and an operating budget greater than $3 billion.
However, it became clear that an in-house effort could not keep up with changing needs, particularly around government incentives connected with certified technology use.
They purchased Epic. A great decision at the time, but it forced customers to run software onsite with onsite support staff. Upgrades were difficult; new feature releases, security patches, and more created downtime.
Fast forward to 2015 in another industry. British Airways (BA) is a well-established company not known to take excessive risks. Like many other corporations of their size, they ran communication services internally with Microsoft products and an IT staff to maintain them.
Recently, they switched to a service based software model from Microsoft, eliminating the need for in-house maintenance and allowing them to become leaner and focus on their core business.
As staff needs more time to avoid medical errors, healthcare technology companies need to be able to provide software that requires little maintenance, and whose support system can be reached immediately.
Learn how Luma Health can reduce your IT costs and increase your revenue while getting your patients seen faster.
Read part 2 of our series on EMR’s and Software as a Service
Tashfeen Ekram, MD, is a radiologist, self-taught coder, healthcare innovator and Co-Founder of Luma Health. Contact him on Twitter at @tashfeenekramMD.