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EHR Implementation
A Detailed Roadmap
In healthcare IT since 2005, ScienceSoft develops custom advanced EHR systems for medical software product startups and healthcare providers.
EHR Implementation in a Nutshell
EHR implementation is a process focused on creating a reliable, convenient, and highly secure system for health records management and seamlessly integrating it into the workflows of target healthcare organizations. Electronic medical records software helps coordinate patient care, improves medical staff productivity, and stores comprehensive health and billing data.
With a team of seasoned healthcare IT experts, ScienceSoft delivers secure and reliable software for PHI storage and patient billing. When it comes to timeline, t usually takes from 2–4 months to develop an MVP of an EMR system. The costs of the full-fledged electronic health records range from $400,000 to $2,000,000+ and may vary based on the project specifics, target use cases, and software complexity. Use our free calculator to gauge the cost of your project.
EHR Implementation Plan
No EMR implementation process is the same — the exact steps differ depending on medical specialty (e.g., mental health EHR), functionality scope, tech stack, development model, and more. Below, ScienceSoft’s experts share the checklist we follow in our projects.
1.
Discovery stage
- Signing a Business Associate Agreement with the consulting or development partner that will receive access to PHI (for covered entities under HIPAA).
- For software product companies: Researching the EHR market, identifying the competitors, target customers, and features in demand, creating an EHR concept and marketing strategy.
- For healthcare organizations: Analyzing the organization’s business needs and clinical workflows, creating an EMR concept, designing and evaluating successful EHR implementation strategies.
- Gathering EMR compliance requirements (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR, ONC, CMS, FDA, MDR, SAMHSA, and local regulations).
- Creating a business case with TCO and ROI.
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2.
Requirements engineering, architecture & integrations design
- Designing and prioritizing software features to be implemented (including advanced and field-specific EMR functionality).
- Collecting functional and non-functional EHR requirements to create a software requirements specification (SRS).
- Designing an EMR architecture and integrations.
- Selecting an optimal tech stack.
- Assessing the EHR usage and implementation risks and designing risk mitigation plans.
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3.
EHR project planning
- Creating a project plan with timeframes, key milestones, KPIs, and budget.
- Deciding on a project management approach (e.g., Scrum, Kanban).
- Assessing the EMR development risks and creating a mitigation plan.
- Planning the ONC certification process (US-specific) or certification according to the requirements of local authorities.
- Hiring or outsourcing the needed IT resources.
- Designing a sample plan for implementing an EMR system in a hospital (for software products) or a tailored plan with full implementation support (for custom healthcare solutions).
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4.
UX and UI design
- Conducting UX research to create user scenarios covering different roles within the target healthcare organization.
- Building UX wireframes and conducting UX testing.
- Creating UI prototypes based on the EMR wireframes.
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5.
Iterative development and testing
- Developing software front end, back end, and APIs for EMR integration.
- Integrating EHR with smart medical devices or wearables (if needed).
- Implementing the necessary security mechanisms (e.g., data encryption, MFA).
- Conducting end-to-end EMR testing, including functional, performance, security and compliance, compatibility, and accessibility testing.
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6.
Pre-launch activities
- Revising the software usage risks and documentation, updating and reflecting changes introduced during the iterative project development.
- Conducting a HIPAA compliance risk assessment, GDPR compliance audit, or audit to verify compliance with other local data privacy regulations.
- US-specific: Submitting the EMR to ONC-Authorized Testing Laboratory (ONC-ATL).
- For SaMD modules of the EHR: initiating premarket submission according to the FDA 510(k) program (US), a Notified Body designated under MDR/IVDR (EU), or other authority according to local regulations.
- Planning role-based user training.
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7.
EMR launch and implementation
- For software products: market launch, EHR deployment to the cloud environment.
- For healthcare organizations: Mapping the data and migrating it from the previous records storage of a healthcare organization.
- User training.
I recommend splitting EHR users into two waves to ease the software adoption process within your organization. The first adopters will help you identify any challenging functionality and improve the training materials to avoid dealing with tons of similar questions later.
8.
User support, EHR maintenance, and evolution
- Setting up a help desk to handle incoming requests from medical and administrative staff (for healthcare organizations) and software customers (for electronic health records software products).
- Establishing maintenance procedures to timely fix defects, implement security patches, resolve incidents, and facilitate smooth EMR operation.
- Monitoring user satisfaction and EMR adoption to address any post-implementation issues (business and technical).
- Conducting EHR audits to ensure continuous compliance with regulatory requirements.
- Improving EHR software functionality, UI, and UX based on user feedback.
As a physician, I urge you to collect continuous feedback on EHR implementation, whether you are an EHR product owner or a hospital IT manager dealing with a custom solution. Physicians, nurses, and admins can offer a unique perspective on software functionality and efficiency and help you enhance the final solution.
Ready to Put the Plan into Action?
ScienceSoft brings 35 years of IT experience to help you turn your ideas into financially feasible and efficient EMR software.
EMR implementation consulting
Take the first step toward successful electronic medical records implementation and meet ScienceSoft’s seasoned healthcare IT consultants. Within 3–6 weeks, they will deliver a comprehensive electronic health records tech design and a business case with costs, ROI, and a payback period.
Full-cycle EMR development
With a team of 750+ dedicated IT professionals on board, ScienceSoft will carry out all EMR implementation steps, from software design to development and QA. You get a fully compliant, user-friendly solution tailored to your target medical field.
Meet ScienceSoft, a Committed Software Development Partner
- 35 years in IT and 19 years in the healthcare domain.
- 21 years in cybersecurity to ensure full PHI protection.
- 150+ healthcare IT projects.
- Working experience with healthcare data exchange standards like HL7, FHIR, ICD-10, CPT, XDS/XDS-I.
- ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications proving our commitment to software quality and security.
- ISO 13485 certification to develop healthcare software according to the requirements of the FDA and Council of the European Union.
- Experience in developing software compliant with HIPAA, HITECH, ONC, GDPR, MDR, MACRA, MIPS, CEHRT, NCPDP, SAFER.
- Established Lean, Agile, and DevOps cultures to streamline EMR implementation.
- A Microsoft Solutions Partner and an AWS Select Tier Services Partner.
What makes ScienceSoft different
We achieve project success no matter what
ScienceSoft does not pass mere project administration off as project management, which, unfortunately, often happens on the market. We practice real project management, achieving project success for our clients no matter what.
Join Our Satisfied Customers in Healthcare
Todd Nilson
MD
We worked with ScienceSoft on the refactoring and modernization of our telehealth web portal and a cross-platform patient application. We are thankful for the meticulous and value-driven approach of ScienceSoft’s team. They created comprehensive project documentation, feature lists, and worked out thorough recommendations to help us improve the stability and performance of our solution.
During our cooperation, ScienceSoft proved to have vast expertise in the Healthcare and Life Science industries related to the development of desktop software connected to laboratory equipment, a mobile application, and a data analytics platform.
They bring top-quality talents and deep knowledge of IT technologies and approaches in accordance with ISO 13485 and IEC 62304 standards.
bioAffinity Technologies hired ScienceSoft to help in the development of its automated data analysis software for detection of lung cancer using flow cytometry.
Our project required a large amount of industry specific methodology and algorithms to be implemented into our new software connected to EHR/LIS systems, which the team handled well. They are reliable, thorough, smart, available, extremely good communicators and very friendly.
ScienceSoft’s Success Stories in the Spotlight
Redesign of a Custom EHR Application for a US Chiropractic Care Provider
After an in-depth quality assessment and code review, ScienceSoft helped a US chiropractic care provider tackle severe vulnerabilities in its legacy custom EMR by completely redesigning the existing solution.
Development of an EHR Mobile Version for a US Healthcare Provider
ScienceSoft delivered an iOS mobile app to help the Client’s medical staff to use their custom-built EMR system on the go. To make the daily routine of healthcare professionals easier, the app allows logging time, capturing images, scanning documents, and uploading files to the EMR.
Development of a Health Monitoring Module for Assisted Living Software
ScienceSoft designed and implemented a health monitoring module for efficient tracking of patients’ vitals and test results. The solution aggregated the health data, identified abnormal parameters using healthcare data analytics, and sent automated alerts to the medical staff.
Team Augmentation for an HIE Platform Provider
After partnering with ScienceSoft, the Client delivered secure data de-identification and sharing software to accompany the core product for patient health information exchange between the medical care providers.
Advanced EHR Solutions ScienceSoft Delivers
Check out the examples of cutting-edge EMR solutions ScienceSoft designs and builds.
Must-Have IT Talents for Implementing EHR
Depending on the needs of each client, ScienceSoft assembles a tailored project team to ensure efficient EHR implementation processes and world-class software quality.
Project manager
Plans the EMR implementation project, assigns tasks to the team, monitors task completion, project budget, and project health based on KPIs; communicates with the stakeholders.
Healthcare IT consultant
Elicits, prioritizes, and documents the requirements; creates a solid electronic medical records concept, feature list, strategy, and process to implement the EMR into the clinical workflows; defines the required integrations.
Solution architect
Chooses the optimal technological stack, designs EMR architecture and APIs for EHR integration according to regulatory requirements.
Regulatory compliance expert
Defines the applicable regulations, ensures electronic health records compliance with the relevant requirements, and helps create documentation for EHR certification, HIPAA audit, etc.
UX designer
Conducts UX research to create user scenarios; plans UX for medical and administrative staff focusing on usability and accessibility; creates UX prototypes.
UI designer
Creates the “look and feel” of an EHR solution and turns UX prototypes into a sleek interface design.
Back-end developer
Creates the business logic and develops the server side of an EHR, implements API for electronic medical records integration.
Front-end developer
Develops the user side of the EHR.
DevOps engineer
Sets up and maintains EHR development infrastructure, helps automate the deployment using CI/CD pipeline, monitors the EHR performance, availability, etc.
QA engineer
Designs and applies electronic medical records testing strategies, creates test cases, conducts manual and automated testing, and provides test reports.
Security engineer
Facilitates secure architecture design, ensures secure coding practices, conducts vulnerability assessment and penetration testing of the electronic medical records.
Data scientist*
Creates data sets and machine learning models; and trains the latter to achieve the desired accuracy.
*for EHR projects leveraging AI/ML (incl. medical image analysis).
Choose a Sourcing Model for Your EHR Project
Technologies We Use to Deliver an Advanced EHR
How Much Does It Cost to Implement an EHR?
ScienceSoft’s healthcare IT consultants determine the cost of each EHR implementation project individually. Generally, they take into account the following key factors:
- The scope and the complexity of EHR functionality, including medical specialty features and advanced capabilities like RPM, AI chatbots, natural language processing, and blockchain-based records storage.
- The data volume to be migrated, collected, stored, and processed by the EHR.
- The number and complexity of integrations (including legacy software, medical devices, third-party services).
- The chosen technology stack.
- EHR accessibility requirements.
- Compliance-associated costs (e.g., related to ONC’s Health IT Certification Program).
- The sourcing model and team composition.
- Infrastructure, maintenance, and support costs.
Learn more about EHR implementation cost factors and ROI.
In ScienceSoft’s experience, the costs of custom EHR implementation can range from $400,000 to $2,000,000+ and largely depend on the project specifics and target use cases.
Looking for a precise EHR cost estimation?
About ScienceSoft
Mature and committed to software excellence, ScienceSoft is an IT consulting and software development company with 35 years in IT. ScienceSoft has completed 150+ successful healthcare IT projects and is ready to implement EHR software according to HIPAA, GDPR, ONC, MACRA, MIPS regulations. Our top priority is driving project success no matter what while keeping to the agreed time and budget and responding to uncertainties agilely.