Saturday, June 21, 2008

A free EMR Solution?


MD Bug is a FREE electronic medical record (EMR) solution. So what's the catch? Advertising.

Is it working? Well, I'm not sure that doctors want to trust a free solution. After all, service calls and support issues may get neglected.

However, perhaps someday Google will come up with a professional solution that will interface with Google Health. There is a huge market out there and I have to think that Google is working on developing such an offering.

10 comments:

  1. Dr. Kim,
    If I grasp your question correctly then Google health already interfaces to several professional health data sites. Google Health is now starting to interface to BlueCross BlueSheild of Massachusetts as well.

    mailto:Rick0.Merrill@gmail.com

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  2. There is a completely free EMR and paperless office system available at many FREEWARE sites. It consists of a filing cabinet and a speech recognition note, prescription, order, etc writer. Search on "Documentor" or "Records" or "Gary Tobis" and you will find the software.

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  3. I am currently using Practice Fusion's Free EMR and it is an phenominal product. Accoring to their website they are the fastest growing community in the US and after using their product I understand why. You can check them out their Free EMR here.

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  4. I was just going to write about Practice Fusion.

    Maybe I missed it, but is Practice Fusion a CCHIT certified ambulatory EHR?

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  5. please be up front about ractice Fusion's Free EMR and mention the embedded ads

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  6. There is a lot of software out there are also companies that offer free HIGH Quality EMR solutions like All Scripts or NextGen if you use them for Medical Billing. One Company that is launching into this is www.PhysicianWorldOnline.com. You can read about them on their blog at PhysicianWorldOnline.com/blogpm or at www.FreeEMRSolution.com. I highly recommend this company for Medical Billing, they have done a great job for us so far.

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  7. VersaForm offers a Free EMR that does not serve advertising. Instead, certain features are unavailable unless you buy the Premier edition. If you just need a basic Electronic Medical Records solution, VersaForm might be a good choice.

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  8. Practice Fusion’s free EMR is gaining rapid adoption. It is a hosted, web-based ambulatory EMR which is able to be offered free to physician end-users, paid for by alternative revenue sources (advertising, work with service partners) – I wrote a description of this approach to EMRs on The Health Care Blog recently.

    As a web-based product, features are being added very quickly – and version-control issues otherwise found in applications that need local installation are thus not encumbered (when a new feature is added, it becomes immediately available to everyone). It is not yet CCHIT certified, but has been on track to become that in 2009; however, the provisions for Certification in the newly-passed federal stimulus bill appears to move the certification process out of the public/private CCHIT realm and move it over to a government-only process overseen by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – whatever Certification path becomes the one to emerge will be the path that Practice Fusion takes.

    Further, as a hosted EMR, there is consistency of data across all practices that use the free system. What that means is that clinical chart-sharing between clinicians taking care of a given patient (all done with high-level security in place) becomes possible. The ability to interact collectively using a “one-patient-one-chart” approach is something I believe will unlock the dilemma of interoperability found with locally-hosted data.

    Robert Rowley, MD
    Chief Medical Officer
    Practice Fusion, Inc.

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  9. I'm concerned that free is synonymous with 'you get what you paid for'. How about the 'ads' that they serve you? How intrusive is that?

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  10. I have spent a lot of time reviewing the various "free" emr products out there and would agree with http://freeEMRsolution.com in that most of them are a waste of your time and energy. I had a demo with Practice Fusion and liked the product except for the fact that they wanted me to start outsourcing my billing to them. I was able to find a solution advertised on FreeEMRsolution.com that is a web based EMR that is 100% free. Paid for the same way practicefusion pays for theirs but in my opinion it is a much better product. You can sign up to view a demo at http://freeemrsolution.com/mitochon-systems-free-web-based-emr/

    Hope this information helps.

    Dr. Larrison

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