Since I am attending the conference on SaaS- (SaaSCon 2009 , San Jose, CA) this coming week, I wanted to see how the EMR solutions and vendors are aligning themselves and/or designing the products to take advantage of this trend.For those unfamiliar with the SaaS terminology, the wikipedia definition and whatis definition are nearly the same: This is a way of renting software rather than buying it.I won’t get into the details of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) or ASP (Application Service Provider) but it is important to know that SaaS is not a fad and has gathered enough momentum.In the meanwhile, other aspects of computing such as storage have also become mature enough to be available as a service.All these - software, storage, … - can be combined into a concept called “Everything As A Service”, typically represented as “XaaS” (X denotes the “don’t care/doesn’t matter” which component of the computing platform as all are available as service.). More on Xaas (pronounced as ZaaS) at this blog entry. Going back to the healthcare world, here are a few vendors who have jumped on the SaaS bandwagon (or at least have trend-aware marketing folks):MedPlexus : “MedPlexus focuses on the business and clinical issues of the medical practice; using a combination of Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, BPO services, and a 360º practice performance analysis to provide solutions for its clients of all sizes.”RelayHealth : In their interview of this company, the blog HISTech Report writes:
Axolotl : From their press release about their product: Elysium’s community-wide Master Patient Index, EdgeServer(s), Interoperability Hub, Community Virtual Health Record, and EMR Lite with integrated e-prescribing are all provided as a software service (Saas).There are many others and expect more to join in.Of particular interest to me was a comment (in the TechCrunch’s note about a new product called Producteev- A SaaS product, recently announced and available):
- March 18th, 2009 at 11:13 am PDT
I am a Systems Administrator for a small rural critical access hospital. We will be beginning implementation of a Electronic Medical Record system within the next 3 months. Producteev would help us manage this project more effectively. This project is going to last at least 2 years and affect over 200 employees. It is going to be very important that all tasks involved with the project are managed and communicated well to insure that the implementation goes as smoothly as possible. I have gone through the Producteev tour, and it looks like a product that would help us immensely.
It seems to me that SaaS- or rather, Xaas - will bring powerful solution options to the healthcare space in general and EMR/EHR area in particular.
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June 13, 2009 at 13:29
Being in the medical field, it is a great help to read as much new information as I can. Thanks for the post with so much useful info.