VitalHealth iPad Like EHR Interface


During my time at HIMSS, one EHR vendor, VitalHealth EHR, made the pitch to me that they’ve really created an EHR from the ground up that was more innovative and usable than all the other EHR software out there. They described the doctors that stopped by their booth and saw a demo loved their interface and wondered why all the EHR software companies hadn’t done something similar. While an interesting pitch, I asked them whether such a pitch would be able to be heard above all the EMR noise.

After such a pitch I was certainly interested to see the product demo myself. I should say that going into the demo they’d told me that it was still in beta (maybe even alpha). Their website says it will become generally available in Q3 of 2011.

They did a demo of their product on a touch screen computer (I think they should have done it on the iPad. Especially with all the iPad Mania in Healthcare). However, the thing that struck me most was that even on this touch screen computer it looked and felt like an iPad. I’m not sure if they got their inspiration from the iPad and iPhone or if the iPad and iPhone stole it from them (I think I know which), but I was pretty amazed at how similar the interface and navigation felt to that of the iPad.

Unfortunately, outside of the interface, the feature set of the product was pretty disappointing. I asked them to do what I thought would be some pretty simple things (I think it was something with diagnosing) and that feature wasn’t quite built. Not all that surprising since they’re still in beta. Plus, I imagine they were trying to get something together before HIMSS. What will be more interesting is to see them after a year of development under their belt. Will they be able to get the required feature set for it to be a viable alternative? I’ll be certainly keeping an eye on it.

A post like this wouldn’t be worth anything without some screenshots of this “iPad” like interface. I’m not sure these screenshots quite do it justice since the navigation matters too, but you’ll notice some specific design things they’ve done to enable the touch screen capabilities of an iPad and similar devices. Either way, I love seeing EHR screenshots, so here’s a bunch of the VitalHealth EHR screenshots (click on them once to see a bigger shot. Click a second time to see it full size):

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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