Medical records are essential to every patient’s path to good health, from ensuring you get the best care and keeping track of your healthcare information. Globally, digital information technology has transformed healthcare records, putting critical patient information at doctors’ fingertips. Learn in this guide how to make EHR & EMR Epic integration with your health app.
Epic is one such electronic health record (EHR) system used for telehealth, billing, scheduling, reports, and e-prescriptions by hospitals, independent practices, skilled nurses, and businesses of all sizes.
In this article, we’ll look at how your health phone app can be integrated with Epic’s EMR and EHR systems.
What is Epic Software?
Epic Software is a program under a design to assist doctors and other healthcare professionals (insurance agents, pharmacists) in managing electronic medical records and tracking patient health information. It allows for much faster access to data, avoiding unnecessary tests or drugs that can cause side effects, and so on. It also aids the significant improvement of business processes.
Founded in 1979, the software currently holds electronic records for over 250 million patients, demonstrating the company’s reputation and experience in the industry. It was with a name top EHR 12th straight year in the nomination “Best overall software suite.”
What’s the difference between EMR and EHR systems?
Despite their similarities, EHR and EMR medical records systems differ because of their data access. EMRs contain data maintained by a single doctor or group of doctors from a single medical institution; when you transfer to a different hospital, your record starts from scratch.
The EHR systematizes all information entered into the system by medical personnel. Any doctor in the country can access the current data and send it to colleagues.
What is EHR/EMR Integration?
Electronic Health Records (EHR) integration allows medical records to retrieve across various electronic software solutions. With this, medical records such as personal information, medical history, and more are present digitally and can be easily up on various technological devices.
Integrating EMR/EHR simplifies the lives of medical staff and patients by allowing them to download a person’s medical history in seconds. It saves time on various time-consuming but necessary formalities such as filling out forms.
Does Epic have an API?
Yes, it does. You can integrate your software with EHR (which we have found will give your product a huge advantage) in several ways:
HL7 (Health Level Seven) – a set of international standards that issue recommendations for transferring and exchanging data between medical institutions and other healthcare providers.
FHIR API (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) – it is a special API for exchanging health records and for describing how health data should be up when moving between authorized applications. It ensures that patient data traveling between healthcare apps is consistent and digestible by all apps. It’s better for iOS.
Personal EHR integration modules designed by developers.
Some Case Studies:
- Calmerry Online Therapy Platform
- Orb Health – Сare Management As A Virtual Service
- BuenoPR – 360° Approach to Health
But Epic is the most optimal because interoperability is easier to achieve using EHR solution providers’ public or open API. And the exchange of data between Epic EHR and your product takes place using the Epic API.
API is an application programming interface, a set of rules for working with data. With its help, you can understand how to retrieve info and send it back in each case. It is an intermediary between the application and the EHR/EMR system and to make the epic integration with the health care app.
Upon receiving a specific request, the API relays it to the system. It then receives, processes, and issues a response containing all the necessary information about the patient in a unified approved format USCDI (The U.S. Core Data for Interoperability).
How to Integrate Your Health App with Epic EMR/EHR Systems?
The first step is to consider the server where your application is present. Next, check the compatibility of the sites from which you will collect information. Make sure the EHR/EMR supports these sites.
After that, create an account at Uscdi.epic.com, which is required to access the API key. Confirming your identity is important to protect encrypted data via the SSL protocol.
Then Check that the API has the necessary endpoints so that your application does not stop receiving data from the system halfway through. Assess everything from medical history to allergy markers. You will see the API key on the website, which is best tested to see if all endpoints are working as expected.
Include API calls in your application code using endpoints. After everything is implemented and tested, you can take advantage of the Epic EHR/EMR integration.
How To Make A Medical App: The Ultimate Guide
The Benefits of Integration EHR/EMR
There are a lot of benefits to integrating your app with EHR/EMR. Some of these include:
Quick access to any medical institution.
Doctors don’t always have the opportunity to see a patient in their office; sometimes, they have to go out and work with no computer with available data. The implementation of Epic EHR allows viewing everything from a smartphone. With Epic, healthcare providers exchange more than 200 million records each month.
Cost optimization.
The Epic API is easier to integrate than HL7 or CCD. In the latter case, the developer must write a lot on his own; this significantly affects the project’s cost. Whereas Epic syncs with EHR/EMR for free.
Scalability.
With Epic’s electronic health record integration, you can easily resize your database. It is helpful for medical organizations such as intensive care units, where patients are under constant supervision, resulting in many entries.
Who Needs To Make Ehr Emr Epic Integration With Your Health App
In addition to the above cases, the Epic USCDI API is the best fit for applications focused on remote patient treatment. For example, telemedicine. The patient does not need to collect all of his data from different clinics to forward it to the appropriate specialist. The doctor will find where to get them.
Epic EHR/EMR integration is also suitable for patient management, which tracks and controls treatment plans. When a patient’s medical history is reviewed, the app retrieves baseline and current clinical data (drug status and test results) and tracks changes.
Which Healthcare Organizations don’t Need Epic EHR/EMR Integration?
Note: if your software requires more than just retrieving data, you need to consider other APIs because Epic only allows you to view the data, not make edits! Thus, if the attending physician is going to add new or correct existing information, remember about HL7, FHIR API, etc.
Epic is also unsuitable if you need data synchronization or extensive analytical data (as a rule, there will be no overload with data on one patient). It also doesn’t work for patient-oriented applications, as the information stored in the EHR/EMR is primarily for physicians.
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