Creating software is a complex process. And even the most mundane development life cycle requires a comprehensive coverage of too many stages, such as design, development, quality assurance, and others. Yet, when it comes to building industry-specific software, it gets even more complex as the number of technical and legal requirements and regulations grows exponentially. Furthermore, the number of tech hurdles you will face skyrockets, especially if we are discussing healthcare software development.
The experienced industry players know that simultaneously securing patient data and turning it into an efficient commodity used to increase the patients’ well-being is a tall order to deal with. One of the most critical challenges the healthcare providers and their partners encounter is the successful creation or integration of the EHR system into their solution.
According to Science Direct, 50% of all EHR systems development or integration projects fail or swiftly cease to be properly utilized. Why is that so, and what is the best way to develop EHR software that will bring tangible results? The short answer is that they are not utilizing the FHIR data storage as they should. Yet, if you want to gain an in-depth understanding of the best FHIR storage options for your healthcare business, you will find the answers to your questions below.
“Your database might be 100% HIPAA-compliant. Yet, guess when your patients’ data is most vulnerable? That’s right – when being transferred from one repository to another, FHIR defines how to render the process 100% safe. That is exactly why I paid exclusive attention to our engineers’ and architects’ in-depth FHIR training and expertise.”
Mike Lazor
CEO, SPsoft
“It always makes me proud how we at SPsoft address EHR software development by pulling every leverage the FHIR data storage has to offer for our clients. Our experts don’t make things harder on the client’s end. We just know how to build efficient EHR solutions that thrive with the help of FHIR as we spent years learning and mastering every guideline and every loophole there is.”
Romaniya Mykyta
Head of Product Management, SPsoft
EHR Software Development: Not a Love at First Sight
Trying to build a decent healthcare solution without any knowledge of efficiently personally identifiable patient data protection, management, and storage may be problematic. You can know the basics and how the product should work. However, you will only succeed with incorporating FHIR storage into your solution, as its absence will bring about technical and legal issues. FHIR, by The Economist, helps standardize how patients’ data is exchanged and thus lays the groundwork for your solution’s interoperability capabilities.
The EHR systems’ main task is patient data transfer to boost the efficiency of treatment and prevention processes. But how do businesses often make their lives harder when building EHR solutions by discarding the inclusion of FHIR or doing it wrong? There are four main scenarios that we have explored based on our experience when delivering custom EHRs, LIS/LIMs, RIS/PACS or patient portals to our clients.
Would you like to learn more about the best FHIR storage solutions for your healthcare business? Get in touch, and our experts will answer all your questions. Contact us!
Choosing the Lesser of Two Evils
Healthcare providers often make their lives harder by trying to build everything from the ground up. At the same time, they might have used FHIR as a troubleshooter for half of the problems they would have otherwise faced during their product’s full custom development.
Not Understanding the Nature and Complexity of Healthcare Software Integrations
In healthcare, workflows and integrations are way more complex than in other industries, such as fintech or automotive. FHIR, HL7, HIPAA, CCDA, and X12 are the standards for healthcare that your tech partner has to master in a short period if you are looking to beat your competition.
Decision-Making on Poor-Quality Data
Numerous data hurdles and silos make custom EHR software development even harder. For example, mapping data to FHIR resources is one of inexperienced developers’ most common challenges. Yet, many others exist, such as duplicate records across multiple databases, vendors, and institutions. They infuse with pain the development of HEDIS or CDS reports on top of RxNorm, LOINC or SNOMED/ICD-10/CPT/HCPCs.
Twisted Perception of Healthcare Engineers’ Qualification
Nowadays, you can find hundreds and thousands of customer software development partners. Now, the question is: how many of them are specialized in custom healthcare software development? Healthcare talent unicorns are extremely rare.
The domain itself is heavily regulated, which renders it complicated and sets the bar high for those willing to enter it. Yet, having a knowledgeable partner who genuinely understands the nature of proceedings in the niche can become the game changer.
Learn how FHIR can help you ensure your organization’s ultimate interoperability within the greater healthcare services ecosystem with duly mapped data.
Off-the-Shelf Solutions: Are They Any Good?
Of course, many companies repel from custom FHIR storage software solutions, thinking they might fully substitute them with off-the-shelf products. That is, some companies think that the SaaS approach would work within a personalized business context. There is no reason to lie, as there are some decent options. Off-the-shelf solutions cover most functional needs you would expect your storage solution to have. Yet, besides their many positive features, there are also significant gaps in their operational coverage, which may lead to severe ramifications.
Below is a detailed comparison of the three popular off-the-shelf FHIR data storage solutions.
Medplum
Medplum is an open-source platform for healthcare developers that lets them build, test, and deliver healthcare solutions and services. It can be beneficial when building compliant and interoperability-ready healthcare apps.
HAPI FHIR
HAPI FHIR is nothing but a complete implementation of the HL7 FHIR standard for healthcare interoperability in Java, licensed under the Apache Software License 2.0.
Aidbox by Samurai
Aidbox by Samurai positioned itself as a next-generation development platform for those willing to create revolutionary web and mobile healthcare apps on HL7 FHIR. Yet, in this case, it should be acknowledged that this is the only instance where the cons outweigh the pros.
Now, look deeper into the off-the-shelf solutions that can help you establish a FHIR-compliant EHR solution for your healthcare business.
What Do We Say?
To help you with the analysis, the SPsoft healthcare software development experts have prepared a brief yet comprehensive summary of each solution above.
- Medplum is a decent option, yet it lacks stability, which might become a major hurdle for withstanding the competition. Furthermore, do not forget that healthcare solutions must be accessible around the clock. So, problems with stability might get you into regulatory and legal turmoil.
- HAPI FHIR – solid backend, useless frontend. User experience and navigation, in particular, are crucial in healthcare software. With HAPI FHIR, you might spend a lot of money advertising your solution’s incredible functionality, but do not be surprised if your patients will not locate it.
- Aidbox is a mediocre solution with a high price and an awkward support service. Last but not least, Aidbox was developed by Russian engineers, which compromises its security and automatically derides its reliability.
How to Do It Right: Establish Your FHIR Storage the SPsoft Way
Based on our extensive experience, the SPsoft engineers have developed a unique strategy for delivering an efficient FHIR-compliant EHR solution. Our expert offers to deploy HAPI FHIR with a custom-tailored UI based on SPsoft’s patented telehealth accelerator. That would help us equip the solutions with all the additional features required for meeting the client’s needs.
One important thing to remember is that UI in healthcare is a specific domain that requires relevant skills to succeed, as a patient’s experience is not a client’s experience. Besides, given the complexity of custom healthcare software development, the challenge is finding engineers with the FHIR experience needed for decently deploying FHIR storage. Considering SPsoft’s immense knowledge and in-depth expertise in deploying FHIR-based EHR repositories, we can help you become the next unicorn healthcare product.
Have you ever considered combining Epic – one of the world’s best EHR solutions providers – and FHIR? This is quite a promising avenue to walk when ensuring healthcare data interoperability.
There Are Options
When talking about custom software development, you always have options. If you find our offer as the one going sideways with your business development plan, here are four other options to consider. You can go for them to establish an efficient FHIR storage for your healthcare product.
- Start with available boxed EHR/EMR product(s) on the market and try to customize them in the future as needed.
- Develop a new tailor-made platform on top of existing FHIR storages.
- Combine custom development and boxed EHR/EMR products.
- Choose to do your custom development from scratch without leveraging existing EHR/EMR products and FHIR storage.
Even if you opt for your scenario in FHIR storage development and implementation, we will be there to help you implement it successfully. We will assist you in making the right choice.
Dive into a comprehensive guide on how to leverage the SMART on FHIR approach to ensure complete healthcare data interoperability.
A Round-Up: Make the Best Decision for Your Business
Even though healthcare software development is complex and challenging, it still offers room for maneuvers when choosing the best tech composition for the solution you are trying to build. It should be acknowledged that there are better custom software development strategies as they offer faster time to market and boost flexibility regarding the product’s further development.
However, when talking about FHIR storage implementation, the formula of success is 50% dependent upon the qualification of your tech partner. Their ability to find creative and, at the same time, technically reliable ways to set up your FHIR storage is essential.
Contact us, and our experts will offer you the best way to establish FHIR storage based on your business’s personalized operational needs.
