Welcome to EMR and HIPAA

Sorry for yet another biometrics, but I’ve been working with biometric logins at this stage of my EMR implementation. I contacted a vendor about getting some logins to test with my EMR and he obliged with 3 of them. I later figured out that he has some other motives then just me purchasing them, but who cares, I got 3 biometric logins to test free.

I asked him about having multiple users using the same computer and the biometrics integrated with active directory and my EMR. He pointed out an idea that I can’t believe I didn’t think of before. Windows has user switching. He said that the biometrics is integrated with User Switching in Windows XP and so when a new user comes in it will switch to their account automatically. This is a nice idea because that means that all of the EMR programs could already be logged in when you switch to your user. I’m not sure how this will work in real life, but the concept is great. I’m afraid that having multiple users on one computer both connecting to the EMR database might cause a problem.

We’ll see soon enough. I have 3 of them coming.

I found a pretty interesting blog about a Doctor in Canada’s experience implementing an EMR. So far it has a pretty good overview of a bunch of things to consider when implementing an EMR. It is also good because it comes for a doctor’s perspecitve rather than a vendor or tech person. In fact, some of the posts I’ve read have some good asides describing some of the technology so even the non technical user can understand. I look forward to reading more as this blog continues. I was going to do this myself when I started to implement my EMR. I’m glad I didn’t, because it wouldn’t have been what I expected. Although it may have been interesting seeing a tech person try to learn not only a new software system, but also understand how a clinic works. Oh how quickly life changes and you end up blogging about EMR.