This Complete EHR is 2011 Edition compliant and has been certified by an ONC-ACB in accordance with the applicable certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This certification does not represent an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or guarantee the receipt of incentive payments.
EyeMD EMR Healthcare Systems, Inc.
Date Certified: 2/17/2011
EyeMD EMR TM - Electronic Medical
Records (EMR) for Ophthalmology
EyeMD EMR is an Electronic Medical
Records (EMR) software for the Ophthalmology Specialty.
To find out more about our
Ophthalmology Electronic Medical Records (EMR), click
continue.
The Current Landscape of
Ophthalmology Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR) Software's and
How it Relates to Our Company.
EMR's have been in existence for quite some time now. There are
literally hundreds of Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR)
software packages available for all types of medical specialties. While
there are several Electronic Medical Records software packages out there
that work very well for many types of specialties, the Ophthalmology
Specialty has unfortunately been left behind. The main reason EMR/EHR
developers have not adequately targeted the Ophthalmology Specialty is
simple; Ophthalmology medical documentation is radically different and
far more complex than most medical specialties. Ophthalmology
documentation as you probably already know requires up to hundreds more
numerical values, requires complex optical mathematical formulas,
requires imaging and data values from numerous diagnostic machines and
procedures, requires surgery documentation & the list goes on and on.
In a competitive Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR) vendor
environment, most Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR) software
vendors have opted to create Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR)
software that can be used for multiple medical specialties. The reason
for this philosophy is simply that they desire to capture multiple
markets, and do not want to be limited to a certain specialty. While
this philosophy and business decision seems to be practical & good for
business, it limits the opportunity for the Electronic Medical/Health
Records (EMR/EHR) software to streamline & enhance the software
experience for the end user. Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR)
Software (designed to accommodate multiple medical specialties) are
generally template driven, and in some cases allow or even require the
end-user to design the template. It seems like a good idea at first, but
one look at the end result proves a serious flaw in the design... It's
efficiency is limited, and it is generic in nature. More time was spent
by the developer(s) creating a software that was flexible than creating
a software that enhanced efficiency, streamlined office procedures, and
presented the collected data in a manner that enhanced the overall user
experience & enhanced the quality of patient care. Electronic
Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR) vendors recognize this problem, and
market their software assuring Return on Investment (ROI), along with
the promise of efficiency after a "slight" learning curve. On rare
occasion an honest sales person will promise efficiency after behavior
modification, and the implementation of procedural change. Every EMR/EHR
software vendor will promise ROI & efficiency, but not every EMR/EHR
software vendor delivers. Many Ophthalmologists have resulted to staying
after-hours inputting data as the software is too inefficient to use in
real time. In extreme cases, Ophthalmologists have ripped their EMR/EHR
out of their practice and reverted back to paper.
Another flaw in it's design is more of a technical issue, but is still
something you should consider. The data is stored using risky &
inefficient storage methods, which can slow the performance of the
software significantly and expose you to data corruption and/or loss of
data. In some extreme cases, simply updating the software to a new
version can render all your previous medical records useless! Also,
because every Doctor has the ability to modify the structure of the
software, every Doctor literally has a different software. Because of
this, the EMR/EHR company's technical support is less familiar with the
software as each practice has it's own version of it. We have heard
reports of practice's using a template EMR/EHR recommending to new users
of the template type system to not customize it as it is simply not
worth the aggravations and the risk. For more technical details about
this please see Appendix #1 below.
Streamlined & efficient processes are just not feasible in a template
driven software. Creating a streamlined, efficient process that enhances
the user experience & patient care requires a complete understanding of
the task at hand, requires an enormous amount of computer logic for each
individual field or control, and requires a data structure that is
simple and efficient. This level of sophistication is not feasible in a
template driven software because it was designed to accommodate, not
designed to enhance. The Ophthalmology specialty is unique in the sense
that a template driven software is not only inefficient and poor for
user experience & patient care, it does not work well because it's too
different from the other specialties, and requires a significant amount
of resources & redevelopment to change the template to fit
Ophthalmology. Ophthalmology requires more than a Generic EMR.
Ophthalmology is a specialty that does not look, feel, or operate like
any other specialty. It is completely different, and requires a
different approach.
There are several Ophthalmic specific EMR's out there, but with them you
run into different problems. They either are overcomplicated,
oversimplified, based on shaky technology, or web based. In a world of
extremes, other Ophthalmic specific EMRs fit right in. They either are
so complicated that using it is mind-boggling and you never stop
training on it if you don't trash it, or they are oversimplified, and
not able to capture the data needed and leave you without good features
found on the complicated ones. Several are now Web based, leaving you
susceptible to internet connectivity related outages, performance
issues, inefficiency, lack of features, and data ownership concerns. At
any moment these web based software providers can lock you out of the
system, changes and updates can be performed without your authorization,
and because your data hosted on their servers, the server performance
will be dependant on the activity of other organizations thousands of
miles away! Also, make no mistake these web based service providers will
data mine YOUR data, and sell it to other companies without you ever
receiving any compensation for your hard work. HIPAA does not protect
you from anonymous data collection.
Many Ophthalmic specific EMR's were developed by the Ophthalmologist
themselves! Understandably frustrated with the lack of viable EMR/EHR
options, more than a handful of Ophthalmologists in their spare time
have created respectable looking EMR/EHR software packages using
unconventional "development" tools such as Microsoft Word®, Filemaker
Pro®, and Microsoft Infopath®. While these can be powerful tools for
accomplishing certain kinds of tasks, "tool maxing" an EMR/EHR in our
opinion is a disaster waiting to happen. These tools are not fully based
on Enterprise level relational databases, and can expose you to lack of
sophisticated reporting, potential data corruption, and loss of data.
Furthermore, converting it to another EMR/EHR in the event you change to
a different EMR/EHR would be an absolute nightmare. Converting is
difficult enough with relational databases, converting thousands of XML
or Word files would take the difficulty to a whole new level. You should
not trust the storage of your Patient's medical records to a platform
not designed for this purpose. Some of these EMR/EHR vendors claim to
use SQL relational databases or equivalent technologies, but in reality
it is only a half-truth. They are storing the XML or Word files within
the SQL database, then claiming they use SQL. This makes reports &
graphs spanning across multiple visits overly complex, inefficient, and
in some cases unfeasible. This will limit your ability to overview a
patient's entire visit history & limit your ability to trend using data
collected from your EMR.
EyeMD EMR is the answer to all of these problems. EyeMD EMR is designed
with only 1 medical specialty in mind, and was fully designed by
professional developers using fast and reliable client/server technology
designed for this purpose. EyeMD EMR is designed just for Ophthalmology,
and can never be tweaked for anything else. It is so in tune with
Ophthalmology procedures, that you will feel like you made it. Mainly
because someone like you helped create it. EyeMD EMR was designed in
direct collaboration with a practicing Ophthalmologist within the
real-world environment of their practice. Our developers moved their
offices into the Ophthalmologist's practice, and created the entire
software onsite. They had direct and hands on experience with every
diagnostic machine available to Ophthalmology, and had uninhibited
communication with every employee in their office. The result is
literally an amazing, streamlined, functional EMR software, and we
guarantee that you will agree after viewing a demonstration.
Appendix #1
Template driven Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR) software are
dynamic, and the structure of the data saved requires constant change.
Relational Databases are not designed to constantly change, and must be
modified by a Developer to add or modify table fields. To work around
this technical limitation, Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR)
software vendors are using relational databases in ways most members of
the technical community consider to be risky & inefficient. To simplify
the practice, think of an excel spreadsheet. Column A is a "Field
Identifier", and Column B is the "Field Data". Basically, the table
becomes a "super table", and bloats the database significantly. Instead
of 1 record with 35 fields, you have 35 records with 1 field each. So if
a typical medical record contains 300 data fields; instead of lets say
6-10 records in a normal database, you will have 300 records, a 5,000%
increase in the amount of records. Imagine having 300 paper charts
instead of having 6 paper charts. Imagine the staff you would need. This
method of storing data is inefficient and drains the computer's
resources significantly, and is the main reason why many of these
Electronic Medical/Health Records (EMR/EHR) software's require the
fastest computers available, and still are slow. To counter this effect
during a demonstration, the demo databases have very little data in
them, fooling you in believing the software is fast. Only when you have
installed the software and have 3 months of data in it will you realize
it's slow, but by then it's too late and you are "stuck with it". Also,
if something where to happen to the field identifier (through a software
version change for instance), you would instantly lose all of the data
in the entire database. Needless to say, backups are even more crucial
in these environments.
Ophthalmology is commonly misspelled as opthalmology emr & optalmology
emr.
Summary: Ophthalmology Electronic Medical Records ophthalmology emr software for ophthalmology
for physician MD compatible with ocular od os visual field oct corneal topography emr ocular coherence eyemd tomography emr iop emr
tonometry emr
gonioscopy emr slit lamp emr va visual acuity ophthalmology emr for
ophthalmology software wave scan opthalmology emr iol master emr
orbscan emr humphrey ziess emr slt laser oct for Ophthalmologists.
