Since the release of Practice Fusion’s EMR 2.0 for the management of medical records, there has been a wave of excitement in the medical world. More and more health care providers are willing to use EMR 2.0 to manage their patients’ records electronically and taking advantage of the benefits of Web 2.0.

It is not hard to see that a new era of Web 2.0 in the medical world is coming. Now Web 2.0 will be used in more doctors’ offices. You are definitely way behind if you are a medical practitioner who is still using a paper system to keep patients’ records. You are also behind if your office is using an expensive system that only offers specific aspects of EMR. Now is the time to boost your practice into modern technology with Practice Fusion EMR. It is easily manageable, searchable, system independent and, best of all, accessible whenever and wherever you need it.

Still wondering about EMR 2.0?  Practice Fusion’s EMR 2.0 is a Rich Internet Application (RIA); the first of its kind. It is an electronic patient record management system that is available to doctors and practitioners via the Internet.

What could be better than having the latest and greatest EMR free of cost? That’s right; Practice Fusion is offering this system for free. The only thing that is required to access it is registration on the website. After opening an account with Practice Fusion, you can access free software training. This internet-based EMR 2.0 can be customized according to the individual needs of doctors, practitioners and insurers.

A few of the major features of Practice Fusion EMR 2.0 include easy chart creation, report tracking, patient diagnosis and medication management, appointment scheduling and secure internal messaging. All of these handy features contribute toward a practice that spends less time dealing with records, and sees more success on a daily basis.

The availability of EMR 2.0 has ruled out the need of traditional enterprise software solutions to manage health records. There is no need for on-site software and hardware integration anymore. Doctors and health practitioners will be able to access and manage the electronic medical records of their patients via the web. At this point, it won’t be wrong to say that Rich Internet Applications (RIA) have also become part of the medical world.

Practice Fusion has taken an innovative step by providing free web-based ERM, while other vendors were selling and implementing their EMRs at a very high cost. Regardless of this, Practice Fusion manages to earn more money than the traditional EMR providers. The initiative behind providing doctors and medical staff with free EMR is simple. Practice Fusion earns money by using real data about patients’ conditions to generate ads for websites.

According to Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion, “The use of Google’s Adsense program is unique because we are embedding ads within an actual product. The Google ads do not interfere with the privacy of patient records, all we transmit is a condition, a diagnosis or a treatment through CPT codes used to present ads.”

While there is excitement in the medical world around the availability of a free web-based EMR, there is also uncertainty and ambiguity about the security of medical records.  Medical records of patients are the most valuable form of data. They allow clinical providers to maintain and improve the way they provide care to their patients. Medical records are used for health surveys, insurance companies and medical statistical studies. It will be easier for practitioners to conduct research when they have their patients’ medical history at few clicks away.

Due to a large number of data breaches in the medical world in recent years, doctors and practitioners are reluctant to use the web-based EMR to keep the records of their patients. Many security advocates are also against EMR 2.0. Not many practices will want to use free EMR at the cost of compromising the medical records of their patients and clients. Reassuring the medical practitioners and security advocates of the safety of the system is the biggest challenge that Practice Fusion will be facing.

Despite all of this, Practice Fusion is doing well and has been able to convince a large number of doctors to use their ERM 2.0, which is also being called SaaS (software as a service) by many. To further encourage the target market - medical supervisors and practitioners - to use the ERM 2.0, Practice Fusion proves the security of Web 2.0 ERM by demonstrating practical examples of their security measures and by having regular internal or external audits of the system.

It is evident that every new system has to put up with criticism before being accepted by its users. This is the case with Practice Fusion. However, no one can deny the fact that Practice Fusion is a pioneer. They have introducing an award winning system to the medical world. At some point ERM 2.0 will definitely be successful.

References

Ryan Howard. “Practice Fusion 2.0 is Now Available” retrieved Dec. 19^th, 2008  from http://practicefusion.typepad.com/weblog/2008/10/practice-fusion-emr-20-is-now-availalble.html

Dana Blankenhorn. “Practice Fusion Brings SAAS Revolution to Your Doc’s Office” retrieved Dec. 19^th, 2008 from http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2734