The other day I was browsing the EMR Update forum (where I started my EMR education) and found this interesting comment about the e-MDs iphone app.

EMDs is charging $250 to “install” it even though the phone does the installation for you and then they are charging $35 a month per device for “support”. I guess they are trying to lose all of their long term customers to other EMRs that are free like Practice Fusion. I find these charges to be outrageous.

Note: I tried to verify this pricing on the e-MDs website, but it’s conveniently not listed on their mobile page. Although, they do have a “free trial.” Is that a $250 install to get the free trial? I also found their website tagline ironic: “Affordable EHR software”

I find this comment really interesting on a number of levels. First, it comes from someone who has indeed been a long time e-MDs user and long been a fan and vocal spokesperson for the e-MDs EHR software. The above seems like such a small amount of revenue to alienate your happy EHR users over.

Second, $250 to help the user install the EMR iPhone app? Really? That just feels wrong on every level.

Third, $35/month for support? Of course, this is on top of the doctors existing e-MDs support contract. Such a terrible plan by e-MDs. If they felt like they needed to get some money for the support that would be required for their iPhone EMR app, then they should have rolled it into the existing support contracts. Then, no one would complain. At least not as loudly.

Now I’m starting to wonder what other EHR vendors are charging for their apps. Let me know what you’ve been charged for your EHR app. A while back I posted about all the various EMR Android apps. All of them were free.

I recently posted about CCHIT joining Twitter. Seems like a decent number of EMR and HIPAA readers are also on Twitter, because I’ve been getting a pretty good number of new followers in the HIT and EMR field.

As my 1423 followers and 2302 updates prove, I like Twitter a lot and really enjoy the way it can help people to connect (I’m techguy if you want to follow me). It’s really quite amazing how 140 characters could turn out to be so valuable and to a wide variety of markets too.

What was really interesting is I recently saw 2 EMR companies join the Twitter revolution: eMDs and NextGen. I think that it’s really smart for an EMR company to join the conversation. At least if it’s done right. So far they only have 8 tweets and 41 tweets respectively. It will be interesting to see how these 2 EMR vendors use twitter over time.

I tweeted one of these companies the following tweet, “How do you plan on using Twitter? Do you have a plan or are you just testing the waters?”

Their response was, “We’re just getting started, but hope to expand communication w/ customers & others in the industry & connect w/ the EHR community”

One thing is certain, we’re just seeing the beginning of what’s possible with Twitter. It’s going to be really fun to see what creative people are able to do with twitter and healthcare.

If you know of other EHR vendors or other important HIT people on twitter, please let me know in the comments.