As clinicians implement electronic tools to achieve meaningful use, it's likely that a diversity of approaches will be used in 2011 - some comprehensive EHRs, some hosted Software As a Service applications, and some modular applications. What are modular applications? Imagine that a clinician assembles a collection of iPhone apps and hosted interoperability services (Surescripts, Quest, Emdeon) to achieve e-prescribing, lab viewing, quality reporting, and administrative data exchange with payers. Such an approach would fall under CCHIT's notion of modular certification. Think of it as a "Project" rather than "Product" certification, ensuring that the collection of applications has the capabilities needed to achieve meaningful use.
This week, Quest introduced a six month trial of its web-based Care360 e-prescribing application, a Surescripts-certified solution which enables clinicians to access formulary information, route prescriptions, process refills and act upon FDA alerts.
Quest also announced that clinicians can now access these services from an Apple iPhone or iPod touch using Care360 Mobile. With Care360 Mobile, clinicians can create and send a new prescription from an iPhone in three simple steps and can also renew existing prescriptions. The application is available in the Apple App Store under Medical Applications and can be downloaded at no charge.
An e-prescribing application with formulary, routing, and refills that is part of a suite of web-based and iPhone products which assist with meaningful use. That's cool.
5 comments:
Great idea. The key to cost saving in Healthcare is the ability to put systems to meaningful use be breaking up monolithic applications into modules hosted on mobile devices. Would love your thoughts on my ideas here http://braincells2pixels.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/how-android-devices-can-leapfrog-the-iphone/
That is a very cool application for the iPhone. A short while back I had the opportunity to interview Rohit Nayak from MedPlus/Quest Diagnostics on where they were going with their Health IT programs, etc. He stated they were also coming out with an EMR soon too. Nice feature with the e-prescribing is that it uses the same data base as the labs. I had a couple IPAs looking at the 6 month free trial seriously yesterday too.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2009/09/quest-diagnostics-announces-6-month.html
I have enrolled in Care360 from Quest. It could be a valuable service but is annoying because you have to get your physician to enroll as well and provide his/her PIN.
As I am the payer for the diagnostic services, I do not feel that I need the approval of the person ordering the lab tests to be able to download and review the data that is legally mine. Granted that I will most likely benefit from the synthesis and interpretation that my physician can provide but I should have access to the digital lab data after I have validated that it is my PHI.
It is my opinion that this service goes against the spirit of ARRA’s requirement to share patient information and should be modified moving forward.
Is there an open interface (api) or service to interface with the ehr? Still very cool.
This does seem very cool. But will it be widely used? I'm not in this industry but my impression was that physicians would use PCs in the examination rooms or in their offices for entering prescriptions. How often would one want to do that from an iPhone? What situations are there where the iPhone would be preferred?
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