Welcome to EMR and EHR

I know I shouldn’t post 2 humorous posts in a row (Yes, my Extormity EHR post was a joke), but you’ll have to forgive me. I just couldn’t resist. Go and read this post that has the CMO of Practice Fusion calling out Greek Philosopher, Archimedes (Thanks Michelle W for sharing it).

Now, ask yourself the question, would your CMO write a post like that? More importantly (and interestingly) would your EMR vendor post something as tongue and cheek as that?

Honestly, that’s one of the things I love most about Practice Fusion. They’ve imbued an incredible sense of culture in that company and there’s an energy about it that I just love. As an internet startup junkie, maybe that’s why it feels so familiar. I don’t really know, but it’s definitely a different type of EMR vendor.

I’m still on the fence on the product that Practice Fusion has delivered so far, but I can tell you that this is one EMR vendor that I’d love to work at.

There’s no doubt that Practice Fusion has been making a big splash in the world of EMR. They were the first EMR company that I’d seen that was pioneering the “free” ad based EMR on the web. You can read more about my first impressions of their free EMR offering on EMR and HIPAA. This interview with the CEO of Practice Fusion is pretty interesting as well.

Now Practice Fusion has made the next logical step and added a PHR front end for patients to be able to access their clinical record. From the look of the screenshots (see below), I’m not seeing anything particularly special about the PHR. In fact, I’d likely say that this isn’t much more than an initial PHR offering. Since it is their initial offering, I guess that makes sense. Certainly they’ll be building it out over time.

What I find more interesting about this new PHR is that Practice Fusion built the PHR on top of Sales Force. SaleseForce.com recently made an investment in Practice Fusion and so this seems to be an extension of that partnership. I see this as a really interesting move for Practice Fusion to build a healthcare application on top of the Force.com cloud. It also will be interesting for SalesForce.com to enter the healthcare space.

Check out the following screenshots of the PHR application: