Custom EHRs: Specialists and individualized approach for improving the quality of health care.

Currently, in the realm of health care technology, Electronic Health Records—also referred to as the patient’s Electronic Medical Record—serve the purpose of filing the patients’ records in electronic format. Today, most healthcare providers opt for standard EHR systems, but there is growing focus on developing special customized EHR systems for certain purposes. Healthcare organizations’ importance of custom EHRs is explained in this article while outlining pros and cons of this approach.

Understanding Custom EHRs

For healthcare practice or organization that is looking at implementing an EHR, it is important to note that a custom EHR is a specially built EHR that meets the particular need of the practice or organization. Since it is custom built, it can easily integrate with that workflow, specialty or patient care strategies as opposed to off shelf EHR’s.

Advantages of Custom EHRs

Tailored Workflows: It also means that customize EHRs can be created and modeled in accordance with the exact processes of a facility, increasing effectiveness and limiting the amount of time personnel need to spend to become acquainted with the system.

Specialty-Specific Features: For practice kinds of specialized disciplines, there can be additional elements provided for in the EHR, such as special templates or diagnostics.

Improved Patient Care: For this reason, if the data required by specific specialty practices and processes is made available and the work flows have increased efficiency, then even custom EHRs can help towards providing better patient care.

Scalability: As a practice evolves, the system is friendly and can be customized to encompass new services, additional employees or a growing practice population.

Integration Capabilities: When implemented properly, modules of custom EHRs can be interfaced with other systems such as another system that contains laboratory data bases or an imaging system.

Considerations Before Implementation

While custom EHR offer numerous benefits, it’s important to consider the following:

• Cost: Developing a custom EHR can require a significant investment. Practices should evaluate whether the benefits justify the costs.
• Development Time: Creating a custom solution takes time, from initial planning to full implementation. This timeline should be factored into decision-making.
• Maintenance and Support: Ongoing maintenance is crucial to ensure the system remains functional and secure. Practices need to plan for continuous support and updates.
• Regulatory Compliance: Custom EHRs must comply with healthcare regulations, such as data protection laws. Ensuring compliance can be complex and requires careful attention.

Steps to Developing a Custom EHR

Needs Assessment: Identify the specific requirements of your practice, including workflow analysis and input from all stakeholders.

Select a Development Team: Choose experienced professionals who understand both software development and healthcare operations.

Design and Prototyping: Develop a system design to capture functional requirements, create a system architecture and then a set of prototypes for carrying out the initial test and to get first-hand information.

Development and Testing: Construct the system and spend ample of time in order to test it and find problems.

Training and Implementation: Make staff aware of the new system and then gradually integrate it, this makes the process easy.

Ongoing Evaluation: It is important to review the outcomes derived from the implementation of the system andabout, and modify the system according to its expanding function.

Conclusion

Custom EHRs let a healthcare practice design a system that will meet its needs without deviation. As with most worthwhile endeavors, they take time, money and effort, ongoing work, but the payoffs in productivity, patient treatment and flexibility are a big attraction for many healthcare organizations. Therefore, by evaluating the factors discussed above then practices are in a position of making right choice as to whether to acquire a custom EHR solution.