Information sources and devices used in healthcare are on the rise, and the growth will continue for some years to come. There are electronic medical records (EMRs), electronic health records (EHRs), health information exchanges (HIEs), billing systems, laboratory and radiology devices, wearables and a host of mobile applications. For all these sources to work together to improve patient care and treatment outcomes, there’s a need for EMR system integration.
When it’s done properly, health data interoperability improves the quality of service offered to patients. It will also:
- Increase patient engagement
- Produce more accurate workflows
- Provide better coordination of patient care
- Improve population health management
- Help save costs and create a better bottom line
Why Do You Need a Single Modern EMR System Integration Engine?
Instead of requesting a separate integration interface each time you need to transfer data between a new application and your EMR system, you should invest in a single integration engine for these reasons:
1. Demands for Information Sharing Are Constantly Increasing
The demands of collaborative care and referrals, as well as the challenges of population health management, have increased the number of information sources needed to effectively treat patients. This also increases the number of transport protocols and health data standards that your developers will need to implement.
While the majority of the clinical data exchange will be done with HL7 version 2 interfaces, document-based standards like CDA and web-based resources like the FHIR interface require that you have a flexible integration engine. With a well-built integration engine, you can treat all interface standards the same way and focus on the actual data instead of the data format.
2. One EMR System Integration Solution Saves Money
Today, many organizations are using more than one integration solution. Some solutions were created for HL7 integration, while others are used for web service integration. It’s also common for different departments like clinical, operations and finance to use different integration applications.
Unfortunately, this type of situation is expensive and cumbersome. It makes it difficult to handle upgrades, maintenance, staff training and support. The best solution is to use an integration engine that can manage all your integration requirements.
3. Consistent Development Process Enhances Speed
With each new device or application added, there’s a need to add new interfaces. This can quickly lead to a rise in the cost of interoperability. The best way to reduce this cost is to minimize the time required to build new interfaces. When you’re using a modern integration engine, you can build interfaces in a consistent way using scripts and reduce the time needed for development.
4. Reliability Is Built In from the Onset
You can’t afford to have an unreliable interface engine. Unscheduled downtime in any healthcare organization is totally unacceptable. A reliable interface engine reduces downtime by giving you maximum availability and flexible failover options that suit your present IT infrastructure. It also prevents any data loss and ensures message delivery.
5. A Central Web-Based Device Can Monitor All Interfaces
To meet the challenges of the modern healthcare organization that now provides care for in-patient, outpatient, and home-based patients, your interface engine must be able to provide alerts that can be monitored from all locations. It should have a central dashboard that you can monitor from a web-enabled device in any part of the world. This must be combined with other tools to give you prompt alerts that help you locate and resolve errors, regardless of the time and place where they occur.
Would You Like to Redesign Your Existing Interface for EMR System Integration?
Call Lifepoint Informatics at 877.522.8378 to speak to us today. We’ve handled up to 20,000 projects successfully since 1999, and we’re ready to offer you a free consultation or demo.