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11 responses to "List of EMR Specialties"

1. # Jeff commented on July 13th, 2009:

   Many specialized EMRs are born out of necessity. I have seen a few surgical EMRs which are offered by surgeons who got frustrated with the “generic” EMRs. They made their own EMR, liked it and then decided to offer it to others. This “organic” growth of EMRs is probably a very healthy thing!

2. # Shelley Myers commented on July 13th, 2009:

   In addition to your list, there are still more specialties and sub-specialties for example – Hospitalists, Surgicalists, Laborists, Medical Geneticists, Intensivists, and several more. It will be quite challenging to integrate all the various specialities needs and functionality, especially in the systems used by multiple specialties in one department (e.g. ICU- hospitalists and then the patient’s regular IM doc, pulmonologists, etc…)
   I was involved in a research document on the ‘Medical Specialties of the Future’ (2007) if you’re interested, I can send it on to you.

3. # John commented on July 13th, 2009:

   Jeff,
   That is how many of them came about. The problem is that many of the organic home grown are missing some important features. Plus, as they start to grow and be a business they often branch off to other specialties and lose their focus.

   Shelley,
   Thanks for illustrating my point even more. I knew there were probably some missing, but that fact just explains how it’s even harder to fit the various specialty needs.

4. # Jeff commented on July 13th, 2009:

   The core of any EMR is how it documents the progress note. The other stuff is easy (relatively). The home grown EMRs can be developed from a healthy core. If you have an unusable core (like the big company EMRs) then the other stuff does not matter much. The best EMRs available today have evolved from home grown cores done by primary care doctors. For example, AmazingCharts, SOAPware and e-MDs. The home grown core for specialists might be SRSsoft.

5. # Elizabeth commented on July 13th, 2009:

   Although there are many specialized EMRs, I think that specific EMRs defeat the purpose of having your medical records in the same location. More general EMRs today contain all of that information from general practice to cardiology. It’s amazing what modern day technology has allowed us to do. Before it would have taken several hours if not a few days to gather the needed information from different offices, now we can have it all combined in one location that’s small enough to fit in your pocket.

6. # John commented on July 13th, 2009:

   Elizabeth,
   That’s not completely true. Even if every specialty has the same EMR, that doesn’t mean that the various specialties share the information in their EMR. This is true in a few places where they share the same database, but is pretty rare.

   The real key to what you’re talking about is creating solid standards for healthcare data interoperability so that even specialty specific EMR companies can share the pertinent healthcare information with other healthcare providers regardless of which EMR is used.

7. # Jeremy Treister commented on July 21st, 2009:

   Great article. Seems like there are opportunities for developers of a lower-level EMR solution for small group practices.

8. # John commented on July 21st, 2009:

   Jeremy,
   There’s certainly some opportunities, but there are also about 300 EMR vendors that are trying to seize those opportunities.

9. # Jeremy Treister commented on July 21st, 2009:

   I’m wondering about small primary care groups (IM, FP, PEDS); either their affiliated hospital/IDN will offer the EMR as an application service provider or they will have to implement their own. These practices tend to have with inadequete IT infrastructure. So either way, they need IT infrastructure and a solid application vendor.

10. # John commented on July 21st, 2009:

    Most do need IT infastructure help. However, many don’t get it done early and so that becomes part of the reason why their EMR implementation fails. The EMR vendor usually takes the blame for a crappy product when it’s really the IT infastructure of the office was poorly done. Doesn’t matter how good the software product is if the baseline IT isn’t done right. I think EMR vendors are quickly learning this and are starting to be more selective and detailed in their IT infastructure requirements. However, many offices will still ignore it.

11. # Long Term Care EMR Market | EMR and HIPAA pingbacked on September 7th, 2009:

    [...] whole other EMR niche to add to my list of EMR specialties. Related ArticlesGovernment Shouldn’t Talk about Ill Defined EHR TermAllScripts Market Share [...]