Archive for the ‘Oncology’ Category
January 7, 2010
The promised screenshot:
For those who don’t know, a regimen is the bread and butter of Oncology prescriptions. These are published combinations of drugs, specified over certain periods of time, delivered by certain vectors, potentially recurring at differing intervals. These monstrosities are part of the reason electronic oncology scheduling is so different from, say a general practicioner’s scheduling. There are many more ‘layers’ of prescription scheduling needed, in addition to simple appointment scheduling. The screenshot of our regimen creator is below.
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Tags:EMR, Oncology, regimen, scheduling
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January 7, 2010
In a recent post, I have expressed my belief that a comprehensive EMR product will not necessarily guarantee a successful/profitable one. It’s not that I don’t think comprehensiveness is impossible, just that it is unlikely for a comprehensive product to be maximally relevant to and productive for a private practice.
So if comprehensiveness is not always a goal, is there a goal to which all EMR products should aspire? I think so, and I think that goal is connectivity.
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Tags:connectivity, meaningful use
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January 6, 2010
One of the biggest happenings in the software IT field recently has been the publishing of the EMR ‘meaningful use’ guidelines (I say ‘happenings’ because I believe ‘developments’ is too positive a term). Like any other government recommendation, the rules are vague over-generalizations made by ill-informed lawmakers. Surprise. However, there are a few indirect, potentially informative, implications of these guidelines.
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Tags:EMR, meaningful use, microsoft, Oncology
Posted in EMR, meaningful use, Oncology | 4 Comments »
January 1, 2010
At least four times in this project, I have noticed major paradigm shifts in our conceptualization of how this project will work. Like prophesized by Paul Graham, the project is becoming something completely different than I thought it would be.
Tags:drug, prescriptions, regimen, software design
Posted in EMR, meaningful use, Oncology, Paul Graham, Software | 1 Comment »
December 30, 2009
One of the aspects of Oncology that differentiates it from some other medical disciplines is the notion of a Regimen.
Most medical disciplines have recurring appointments that need to be tracked. One or two exceptions might be Emergency medicine and accute care clinics. However, an oncology schedule is more complex and needs to be more flexible than simply scheduling future visits. Oncology schedules are actually made up of many sub-schedules, each of which determines when a particular drug is given or lab values are taken. I think we have come up with an elegant solution for how to modify and create these schedules.
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December 27, 2009
One requirement of Ankhos is to track events in an office on a minute-by-minute basis. Granted, not all practices will need such atomic record keeping, but my client’s practice delivers in-house chemotherapy treatment and event tracking is a part of their workflow. Because one of the main goals for my client is patient safety, we have aggreed that MD/RN/staff accountability is an important aspect of achieving this goal.
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Tags:EMR, Oncology
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December 25, 2009
Python is one of the leading professional programming languages in use today. It was the official programming language of my previous employer and, boy, am I glad I had the chance to learn it! C++ is not much of a web language these days. Many people use Java, PHP and Perl for their web programming. These are all fine languages but it is my personal opinion that they are all inferior to Python for this project.
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Posted in Django, EMR, Oncology, Python | Leave a Comment »
December 25, 2009
One of the lessons my client (Carolina Oncology Specialists… COS) learned with their previous foray into the EMR market was that it is important to have all records available at all locations. In some cases, patients went between locations on the same day, or even different days and the EMR product they had was not efficient at handling multiple sites.
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Posted in EMR, Oncology, Software | 4 Comments »
December 25, 2009
I am a “True Fan” of Paul Graham‘s. His unabashed optimism and clear message of “Customer first and the rest will follow” resonates in my mind. As such, I am approaching this project as a I would one of his startups.
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Posted in EMR, Oncology, Paul Graham, Software | 2 Comments »
December 24, 2009
A few months back, Carolina Oncology Specialists(COS) purchased an EMR product and implemented it in the office. This program performed its duties as a comprehensive data repository but ultimately, it lacked flexibility and was not productive for COS. There was also no benefit to the patient experience. In fact, the experience was so counter-productive that the staff at COS demanded to return to paper charts. Kudos to salesmanship.
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Posted in EMR, Oncology, patient tracking | 2 Comments »
