By Darren Jones, Country Manager, InterSystems

Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems can enhance the efficiency and performance of healthcare services by streamlining care workflows, promoting interdisciplinary working, and providing on-demand access to comprehensive patient information across healthcare teams.

EMR systems also provide a platform for more connected and patient-centric models of care across large geographies or populations, even though their impact in supporting this sort of care delivery reform has been limited to date. Reported benefits of EMR solutions include improved patient safety, clinical outcomes, service efficiency, financial performance, and patient experience. These typically derive from improvements in care documentation, medication management, service insights and compliance, capacity and demand management, and patient communication, as well as reduced incidence of delayed or inappropriate care decisions.

However, achieving these benefits requires high levels of adoption by frontline staff and an ongoing program of value measurement and solution optimisation. Further, to realise value from technological advances like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and new service delivery models, EMR solutions must be architected with evolution and change in mind.

Realising value from EMR systems

While much evidence supports the value of EMR systems, their implementation can be challenging, requiring well-executed change management involving meaningful and continued engagement with time-poor staff.

EMR deployments often focus on organisational value, typically detailed by a business case. Frontline staff often have to extrapolate meaning for their day-to-day working practices, which may or may not happen. Staff can be challenged by change without understanding its value to them as individuals, resulting in poor motivation and change management difficulties.

Articulating value in terms that resonate with frontline staff can help maintain momentum and enthusiasm for change. Established techniques from other industries, such as persona analysis, provide a helpful tool to express role-specific value definitions.

Collecting qualitative and quantitative data is also fundamental in evidencing and communicating the value of a EMR solution. It is good practice to plan and action this activity before going live. This establishes credible baseline data to compare against post go-live data to determine the value delivered and any unanticipated negative value for prioritisation in continuous improvement programs. An ongoing journey, not an event

The delivery and articulation of value is not an event but an ongoing journey. Post go-live analysis may focus upon a defined set of benefit and outcome measures, possibly described by the original business case. But an ongoing program of solution optimisation and value measurement helps to ensure the solution evolves with service needs, whilst identifying underperforming aspects that require corrective intervention.

An important post go-live dataset, commonly overlooked, relates to solution adoption and activity. This highlights areas of functionality and configuration that perform well or those requiring further interventions like user training or solution configuration changes. Automated adoption dashboards (see Figure 1) also provide dynamic insights.