EMR/EHR Development: What You Need to Know

Due to digitization, healthcare is one of the fields that has undergone fundamental developments. New technologies simplify the consultation process, assist doctors in managing healthcare data, and take all patient-physician relationships to a new level.

Documentation is reduced with EHR and EMR software, and with a few clicks, swift access to patients’ healthcare data is granted. It promotes a physician’s productivity and boosts a healthcare establishment’s revenue.

In this post, you’ll learn the difference between EHR and EMR, must-have requirements, how to develop EHR software, the ideal team structure needed, its basic features, and average cost.

What’s the Difference between EHR and EMR Software?

There is a big difference between electronic health records (EHR) and electronic medical records (EMR), although they are used interchangeably.

The electronic health record is a digitalized software that comprises extensive information that has to do with the patient’s health. It generally includes:

• Medical history
• Vaccination details
• Test results
• Vital signs
• Allergies
• Medications
• Lab data
• Progress notes
• Insurance information, etc.

An electronic medical record is a digitalised form of the patient’s chart conserved inside a clinic. It consists of a patient’s medical and treatment history during one practice. EMRs are not to be shared outside the clinic, unlike EHRs designed to be shared with labs and other health providers.

The Necessary EHR Software Requirements

As much as every EHR solution is developed based on the medical facility’s specific purposes and needs, a few features are the same in every EHR system development process.

• Document Management

EHR application development’s main aim is to improve patient care by providing an easy-to-handle documentation tool.

EHR software should be made simple to enable document upload by doctors and patients across numerous formats like image, textual, and DICOM.

• Patients Data

The EHR system normally includes personal data (full name, address, diagnosis, test results, prescribed medicine list, etc.), which sheds light on the patient’s health.

• Prescription Control

When obtaining the patient’s medical data to ensure that there is no drug inappropriateness, doctors can remotely prescribe medicines to them using the e-prescribing feature. On the contrary, patients can keep account of their medical history.

• Data Access Management

A vital point that EHR developers should please note is that no two people (across varying levels) should be able to access the same data. Nurses, for instance, shouldn’t be able to access the same data doctors can.

An EHR system must have numerous data access management processes prepared.

• Appointment Scheduling

Patients can schedule appointments with their doctors in real-time via the EHR software. Doctors, on the contrary, get a dashboard that lets them see the appointments.

• Reporting

When building an EHR system, reporting plays an important role. For doctors, it helps with a thorough summary of the patient’s demographic details, treatments done, speed of treatment achievement, etc. A graphical representation of their treatment, approaching appointments, etc., is provided for patients.

• Labs integration

The integration of EHR with test labs guarantees swift data exchange and quicker decision-making. The test results get forwarded directly to the app, making it more efficient than ever and easy for doctors and patients to access them and take action without delay.

• invoicing

The EHR system makes the process of invoices, claims, denials, and payments made toward treatment easy by automating the invoicing journey.

The Ideal Team Structure Needed for EHR Development

Below is an appropriate team structure needed to invest in for building your EHR software:

• 3 web developers (2 front-end developers, 1 back-end developer)
• 1 Android EHR developer
• 1 iOS developer
• 2 QA professionals
• 1 Project manager

How to build an EHR system?

The development methods to expect your EHR software development company to follow for the development of an electronic health record system are as follows:

1. Initial contact. First, you submit an application on the vendor’s site shortly after pointing out the idea of your project. The manager will contact you to clarify the details.
2. Solution Design team. Your given information regarding the project is analysed and processed by the Solution Design team — especially the business analysts (BAs), a designer, and a solution architect (SA).
3. Discovery phase. The specialists continue to consider your information, detailing what systems your EHR can be integrated with, etc. The designers also begin building the interface of the future platform.
4. Design, Development and Quality Assurance. The project is transferred to the developers, who start materialising the system’s functionality after the design is ready. Sprints carry out the development process, and each sprint is expected to be finished with a prepared part of the functionality or a completed platform. QA professionals must check each feature for bugs.
5. Launch. After the functionality is created, the QA team makes the final validations, and then the software development staff launch the system.
6. Support and maintenance. Cooperation with the vendor is not concluded after the system is launched. The professionals play a huge role here by checking the platform’s functionality for bugs that might appear and upgrading it.

Tips to consider when building an EHR software

• The EHR compliance and certifications should be ready

With certifications like ONC-ATCB and EuroRec, an EHR has to be engineered for many compliances such as HIPAA, GDPR, CCD, HL7, etc. Certifications can lead to serious charges and expose the EHR system to security hacks without these regulations.

• The mobile version of the EHR should be worked on

Although the web version of the software is needed, you make it easy for patients and doctors to connect on the go when you release a mobile EHR. The mobile software also helps keep the patients more involved in their treatment journey.

• Data Migration 

Transferring data from old-school records to the new EHR software is important. Clinic owners can hire employees that will help them with this regular task. Employing an admin that will manage EHR software and upload patients’ medication histories is also advised.

• Track the EHR system performance

To understand how well-known and successful your EHR software is, you should monitor a few vital metrics:

• Physician’s satisfaction
• ROI calculations
• Quality of care required from patients’ feedback
• Monitoring data error rates to enhance  EHR quality

How Much Does EHR Software Development Cost?

For the Web, UI/UX design will cost approximately $4,000 – $5,000 and for one mobile platform, $5,000 – $7,500.

For Web, the normal cost of EHR implementation ranges between $36,700 – $59,000 and for one mobile platform, $25,900 – $65,800.

Are you looking for experts to implement EHR fast and smoothly?

At Healthcare and Telemedicine, developing an EHR system that’ll be highly productive for healthcare providers and suitable for patients is what we do best.

All with the guarantee of high security, extensibility, and teamwork, we have the right skills and technology awareness to help you create and implement an efficient EHR in your healthcare system.

To grow your activity and improve the lives and well-being of your patients, you need to contact us right now and begin your EHR journey.