Technological Challenges while Implementing EMR and its solutions


The adoption of EMR has always been a matter of concern for HIMSS. EMR adoption lags behind other industry sectors significantly in the US and other developed countries and it is at very primitive levels in emerging economies like India. In June 2009, a HIMSS Task Force published a report on EMR Usability. In this report, the task force listed many causes for the low adoption such as cost, resistance to change, fear or avoidance of technology, ingrained patterns of behaviour and reliability and usability of the software.

In this talk today, we will hear about an important factor in boosting the EMR adoption – the way the IT systems handle the EMR software life cycle. The speaker is Devesh Rajadhyax who heads the R & D efforts at 21st Century Informatics. Devesh is a post graduate in Engineering and is working in Healthcare IT Systems since 1997. He has played various roles earlier, including architecting solutions and heading product development. The company he co-founded, 21st Century Informatics, is focussed on transforming the way IT systems are used by Healthcare organizations through innovation. Devesh is going to talk about a new approach to EMR software.

In his talk, Devesh argues that the traditional business software approach of looking at IT systems, which involves a rapid expansion of functionality during Implementation is not suitable for EMR. Certain characteristics of EMR and its users demand a new Evolutionary Approach to the handling of the life cycle of EMR systems. This approach is well supported by the advancement in cloud computing technology and emergence of the SaaS model. A wide acceptance of Evolutionary Approach can mean higher rates of adoption of EMR by Healthcare organizations.