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:
I agree with this statement:
“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.”
As a consultant I’ve investigated PHR’s and EMR’s. There is another PHR and EMR out there that blows this away. But as you said it’s a start. However they have a LONG way to go to before I would even consider using this product.
[…] to ponder the relationship between Salesforce and EMRs. Our fearless leader John Lynn wrote about Practice Fusion building a personal health record on top of Salesforce way back in 2009, seemingly not long after Salesforce invested in the HIT […]