Practice Fusion has released a new, overhauled version of its free electronic health record, optimized for mobile devices, particularly Apple and Android tablets. The upgrade takes the platform, which is aimed at private physicians and small practices, from a web-based EHR, mostly accessed from desktop computers, to an HTML platform that can be accessed on any device and is optimized for mobile.
"Practice Fusion designers, researchers, and developers have dedicated over 250,000 hours to building our new EHR from the ground up," the company wrote in a blog post. "This complete redesign and rethink is the culmination of countless hours with physicians in their practices, watching how they work and observing the ins-and-outs of their patient interactions. For the very first time in the history of medicine, direct feedback from tens of thousands of US physicians has influenced the creation of new software for healthcare professionals."
Users will be able to e-prescribe medications, complete chart notes, access lab results, send referrals, and submit superbills all via mobile devices. Additionally, all current Practice Fusion customers will be automatically rolled onto the new platform.
"As always, the upgrade will be completed seamlessly, with nothing for our customers to download, install, or upgrade," the company wrote. "All patient clinical data that was available in the classic EHR is immediately available in the new EHR, without any hassle."
Practice Fusion worked with San Francisco design firm Cooper to build the platform, which leverages technologies like Bootstrap, HTML5, jQuery, D3.js, Ember.js and is supported in the back-end technologies by Microsoft .Net and Amazon S3.
A survey last year by Black Book said that 83 percent of clinicians would use mobile EHR apps to update charts, check labs and order medications if their current EHR vendor made those features available for mobile. While many EHRs have some kind of mobile access available, it's often via virtualization of a desktop environment. Mobile optimization brings Practice Fusion in line with competitor drchrono, which has long identified itself as an iPad EHR.
In addition to its core EHR business, Practice Fusion has two other business: patient-records software Patient Fusion and population health and data analytics engine Practice Fusion Insights. The company also recently purchased telemedicine company Ringadoc, signaling a possible move into telemedicine for the company.
