The other day, I had the opportunity to interview Mark Scheppe, a developer at CODE responsible for integrating their application at customer sites running EHRs like GE Centricity and NextGen. In our talk, he explains the challenges associated with EHR integration, as well as provides some insights for developers at the beginning of the journey.
Three Quick Tips for EHR Integration
- It’s never as simple as “once we get the JSON we’ll figure it out” because everyone is different. Even if it’s the same EHR vendor at different clients, they’re probably using it in different ways. You need to triple or quadruple-check everything, from the workflow to your interpretation of the data. This isn’t a figure-it-out-live kind of problem.
- At the end of the day, it’s a relatively simple software problem you’re solving but the actual process problems are where the difficulties come in. You might go from thinking there are only three problematic scenarios to finding out there are about 80. Ask thorough discovery questions and work with integration experts to make sure you’re not missing any blind spots that could give you trouble down the road.
- Take it slow in the beginning and embrace the “soft go-live”. Usually, those first 100 messages in production manage expectations and bring to light something you might not be ready for.
For more on their integrations and their lessons learned, check out our case study—CODE Technology at ORA Orthopedics: How Integrating a Live Application Improved PRO Efficiency and Patient Care.
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