Having analyzed the project requirements, our team recommended using Redox as the primary EHR and EMR integration tool.
Redox is a third-party platform enabling integration with various healthcare IT systems, such as electronic medical records, electronic healthcare records, and laboratory and pharmacy software.
Since healthcare data is stored in various formats and systems across different organizations, accessing data from a specific system or facility can be challenging.
Redox emerges as a viable solution to the healthcare data interoperability and exchange problem, extracting medical information from various software systems in a unified format (JSON). The platform provides multiple EMR/EHR integration API endpoints, which help source different types of data.
Based on the system requirements, we selected Redox APIs for aggregating patient lists and information on a particular patient (i.e., age, biometric measurements, home address, and complete medical history). Furthermore, we needed to create a list of locations where the physician portal would be utilized, enabling doctors to assign patients to a particular clinic.
During the EHR/EMR integration implementation, we navigated several engineering and project management challenges:
●
Our business analysts had to conduct numerous interviews with the stakeholders to elicit and refine functional and non-functional requirements for the physician portal.
●
Close collaboration with the Redox engineers was essential to ensure proper EHR API configuration and data retrieval since the platform’s technical documentation was not exhaustive.
●
The ITRex team performed data mapping to distribute JSON files across data repositories using specific data formats. Due to the US patient data privacy and security regulations, however, the mental health portal could only display certain information without storing it. Also, patient data needed to be assessed and mapped against hundreds of parameters; in the early stages, our engineers had to perform the task manually to ensure its proper implementation
on the back-end level.
●
Having set up the data mapping process, we performed the EHR/EMR integration services, merging the mental health portal with the Redox engine. Additionally, the ITRex team designed a sleek, straightforward user interface that enabled physicians to search for patient information and manage the data effectively. One of the curious features on the UI side was integration testing. Once a healthcare facility is added to the portal, a physician can send a test request to the system, validating that the data retrieval process works as expected.
