Like any other IT product, an electronic medical records software that’s good today can be outdated tomorrow.
Customers evaluate not just price, security, quality and functionality, but also how frequently upgrades are made — and better yet — at no extra cost to users.
Toward this, IT providers are continuing to invest in better technologies. For example Epic, a global EMR provider, claims that a whopping 38 percent of its expenses are in research and development. According to the company, this is double the amount invested by its major competitors.
Healthcare IT firms are also engaged in collaborations to advance their capabilities.
“We consider MedLEE a living technology,” said Bernhard Keppler, CEO of Westport-based NLP International Corp., a provider of natural-language processing EMR software.
Keppler collaborates with Columbia University to continuously improve the software’s algorithms, performance and processing modules, at no extra cost to end users.
“We are already integrating our NLP engine with other related technologies such as speech recognition, search engines and machine learning applications. One of the main software upgrades will be to offer anytime, anywhere processing capabilities,” he said.
NextGen Healthcare, a leading EMR provider nationwide, charges an annual maintenance fee for clients, which includes general support and updates, said Mike Lovett, vice president of sales at NextGen.
Companies that deliver software in a SaaS model don’t have to worry about local installations.
“Each upgrade is automatically accomplished at every provider site with each release, and at no additional charge,” said Steve Malik, president and general manager of Intuit Health, a nationwide provider of patient portals.
Leading EMR providers typically make at least one upgrade annually.
Rita Gianotti, practice manager at Internal Medicine of Milford, a six-physician practice, said the office uses NextGen EMR, which is periodically upgraded.
“The next upgrade is to create a patient portal that will enable patients to access information, and allow for flexibility among referring physicians,” she said. “The upgrades are all free and so far they’ve made at least one every year.”
In addition to financial challenges associated with R&D costs and technical challenges involved in frequent upgrades, EMR providers are fighting to transform mindsets.
“Change is always a challenge. Healthcare is the last major industry to make the transition from paper to electronic systems,” said Glen Tullman, CEO of Allscripts, the best-selling EMR software nationwide. The firm has an office in Farmington.
“Although KLAS (a research agency) has reported NextGen is considered in one out of every three deals, there is a significant amount of competition in the electronic healthcare records space. The wide variety of options and the pace at which our industry is evolving cause confusion in the marketplace,” said Lovett of NextGen Healthcare.
“We are already seeing a significant increase in the replacement market because (healthcare) providers are discovering their initial selection could not support their practice beyond rudimentary clinical encounters. It’s important (for customers) to understand the latest innovations, government requirements, pricing options, etc. The early health IT adoption wave has also passed us, so now the overall pace of adoption is slower,” he said.
