• Have to do separate data entry:

Healthcare professionals have to type the patient health records manually in both EHR and telehealth platforms if they have not integrated EHR with telemedicine.

• There is a chance of medical errors:

Because of utilizing telemedicine and EHR separately to provide care, there is a chance of errors such as – wrong prescriptions and information.

Such types of errors can misguide the healthcare professional for the patient’s treatment which can end up in a life-threatening situation.

• Affects patient experience:

During virtual care, the healthcare professional needs on-time patient health records to deliver quality care.

However, without EHR integration, checking patient health records takes time and effort, which can lead to a bad patient experience during virtual care.

• Automatic and error-free data entry:

With the help of telemedicine EHR integration, care providers don’t have to worry about duplicate data entry and medical errors during transferring the data.

In other words, it gives accurate, and on-time patient health data to assist care providers to deliver the ideal treatment for the patient’s health concerns.

• Real-time access to the patient information:

When it comes to virtual care, accurate and secure patient information is the crucial aspect.

By using the telemedicine EHR integration, care providers can access crucial patient health data hassle-free from their telemedicine platform itself.

Also, it allows care providers to update the patient information in the EHR software with accurate information and documentation directly through the telemedicine platform.

• Improves productivity:

Accurate patient data, real-time access, valid patient information, error-free data sharing, and complete documentation assist healthcare professionals to save their clinical time which they generally waste in finding the right data instantly.

• Data and evidence-based prescription:

As we discussed, without EHR integration into telehealth, providers either have to ask about the clinical history of patients to patients themselves or run EHR simultaneously.

However, such a practice never empowers providers to write clinical data and evidence-based prescriptions which result in enhanced patient outcomes.

• Positive patient experience:

To offer the ultimate patient experience – ideal communication, seamless virtual care, and precise medical prescription are the major aspects of virtual care.

By using EHR integration with telehealth, healthcare professionals can effortlessly provide a personalized and positive patient experience as they now have data in hand!

During a telemedicine consultation, some applications are necessary for connecting the patient with the provider. These applications may put the provider at risk if they are updated directly post the patch release.

Web application firewalls protect these applications from some of the common vulnerabilities like:

• Open Web Application Security Project’s (OWASP)
• Malicious bots
• Zero-day threats

A large number of healthcare employees bring their own devices to work. Patients and guests using the healthcare network increase the activity of the network. Security alerts and a centralized view of activity must be available to keep a track of these users. It is necessary even when the IT team implements isolated security protocols.

It enables security to view connected IoT devices and their operation. This transparency is required for providers conducting teleconsultations.

A NAC solution can identify each device connected to the healthcare network.

Security can monitor and track the device following the connectivity. It can even send automated responses to anyone observing their threatening and unusual behavior.

To limit device access, NAC uses micro-segmentation techniques.

Bi-directional data exchange:

In one sentence – the health information is transferable from both ends.

Bi-directional enables the error-free transfer of patient health data from EHR to telemedicine app.

It also allows the care provider to transfer the required data such as patient history, from the telemedicine app to EHR software with accurate measures.

In addition to this, bi-directional data exchange is necessary when the data needs to be transferred from both EHR and telemedicine apps.

There are several benefits of using bi-directional information exchange, –

• Fewer efforts are needed to transfer data from telehealth to EHR
• No need to track and analyze the data from both EHR and telemedicine
• Exchange or share the data in a broader network with zero error

Unidirectional data exchange:

Unidirectional data exchange means – the patient data can be transferable from only one direction – from EHR to telemedicine.

It is the ideal option when there is no need to transfer patient information from the telemedicine app to EHR.

So, which data exchange is most suitable?

Well, it all depends on the requirements of the healthcare organization.

Whether you need bi-directional or unidirectional data exchange, integrating EHR with a telemedicine app will surely benefit you.

Interoperability:

In simple words – interoperability is nothing but the ability of two separate systems to share accurate and secure information.

During the integration process, many healthcare IT developers fail to keep interoperability standards in mind.

As a result, the error appears that can’t let the telemedicine app fetch the data from the EHR accurately and effectively.

To achieve healthcare interoperability, the integration must be executed while addressing all HL7 and FHIR standards.

HL7 integration & development solutions in the USA

We, as a healthcare IT company, have a team of developers with specific healthcare IT knowledge, who have mastered healthcare interoperability.