Surescripts

When is the right time to build your own ePrescriber?

Thursday, May 17, 2012 by Matt Bennardo

One of the major functions of an EMR or EHR system is ePrescribing. The federal government is starting to require physicians and other prescribers to write their orders electronically, both in amubulatory and hospital settings. And usage data suggests that the idea is starting to catch on among many users as well.

But not every EMR developer builds their own ePrescribing module at the outset. Many use third-party modules provided by vendors like DoseSpot. These modules allow EMRs to "bolt on" an already-certified ePrescriber without having to expend development resources or to seek a new SureScripts certification. This can mean getting to market faster.

Should ePrescribing ever move in-house?
Some EMRs who go this route find that the third-party solution doesn't scale with their business model. Although it's a great solution to help a start-up get off its feet, it may make sense to think about developing your own ePrescribing functionality once usage starts to grow.

When EMRs do reach that point, they are increasingly turning to Lexicomp to provide the data that powers their ePrescribing module. Lexicomp has helped many customers certify, both for Meaningful Use and SureScripts. Their data can also power other clinical decision support functions beyond ePrescribing, and can even help alleviate common problems like alert fatigue.

If you're looking to add ePrescribing functionality to your EMR, be sure to contact Lexicomp to find out how they can help.

Are you Electronic Prescribing?

Friday, May 4, 2012 by Ryan Smith

Instead of writing out prescriptions on a piece of paper, doctors will perform this function directly into their electronic medical record. The prescription travels from their computer to the pharmacy’s computer. Electronic prescriptions are sent electronically through a private, secure, and closed network – the Surescripts network.

Surescripts' e-prescribing services allow physicians to electronically send prescriptions from their offices to more than 54,000 retail pharmacies and six of the largest mail order pharmacies. In addition, Surescripts provides physicians with electronic access to their patients' prescription benefit and medication history.

Lexi-Data is the foundation of Lexicomp's clinical decision support architecture is quickly becoming the standard for when companies need an up-to-date comprehensive drug database. This product provides patient specific alerts and referential content to support sound treatment decisions in areas such as drug interaction checking (drug-drug and drug-food), drug allergy checking, therapeutic duplication checking, RxNorm Mappings, supports Surescripts Certification, Drug Classifications, dose range checking (adult and pediatric), Patient Education, and more.

Here ye, Here ye, EHR and EMR developers, business owners and those involved in drug data acquisition

Thursday, May 3, 2012 by David Wilkof

By now it is not a surprise, more and more EMR and EHR business owners and general managers are turning to Lexicomp to solve their drug information needs. In a few short years, Lexicomp has been the fastest growing provider of drug information to the EMR market. This didn't happen by accident. It came as a result of Lexicomp's three-legged trifecta approach to providing drug information to EMR and EHR developers -- of any size!

What are three aspects?

Top quality data
Elegant data structure with easy to use API's
The best customer and development support you can find anywhere. (It makes your work so much easier)

In addition to supplying the expected information such as drug-drug and drug-allergy interactions, adverse drug events, RxNorm mapping, generic drug lists, drug nomenclature, and more. Lexi-Data also offers an incredibly easy to use data structure and APIs! Although, perhaps more importantly, Lexicomp is unparalleled in its customer service and providing assistance in the development process. If you are developing a new EMR and need a drug information supplier, make sure that Lexi is on your list.

And if you are thinking about building your own ePrescribing module, I call your attention to a posting my colleague Matt Bennardo published last week:

As EHR vendors find their products growing and signing up more users, many start to think about moving from using a third-party eprescribing solution to building their own. The reasons for making this switch are many:

As your user base grows, eprescribing fees grow too
Bring features in-house makes it easier to respond to specific customer needs
A third-party solution is a risk, as you never can be sure what will happen in the market

One of the first steps in building your own eprescriber is to find a data provider who can supply you with medication lists and other information that Surescripts requires to certify your tool. Lexicomp is one such provider. They've been focused on providing drug data direct to clinicians for over thirty years, but now they can also supply you with database-ready information to power an eprescriber.

Lexicomp's customers have used their data to certify EMRs and EHRs with ONC testing bodies like Drummond, CCHIT, and Infogard. Their customers have also certified eprescribers using Lexicomp data with Surescripts. And best of all, Lexicomp's flexible pricing and easy implementation allows firms of all sizes to get up and running smoothly and quickly.

EHR and EMR developers, business owners and those involved in drug data acquisition

Thursday, March 15, 2012 by David Wilkof

Are you heavily involved in making the critical decisions for EMR development and the need to include the best drug information, along with the best vendor support?

Several weeks ago I wrote:

Are you the owner or manager of an ambulatory EMR company? What keeps you up late at night? Worried about getting your product to the market as quickly as possible and keeping your costs under control? Worried about certification? No doubt you have some thoughts about reducing medical errors by including the best drug information and internal built-in logic. More and more EMR and EHR business owners and general managers are turning to Lexicomp to solve their drug information needs.

In a few short years, Lexicomp has been the fastest growing provider of drug information to the EMR market. As I said in a previous post:

In addition to supplying the expected information such as drug-drug and drug-allergy interactions, adverse drug events, RxNorm mapping, generic drug lists, drug nomenclature, and more. Lexi-Data offers an incredibly easy to use data structure and API's and most importantly, Lexicomp is unparalleled in its customer service and providing assistance in the development process. If you are developing a new EMR and need a drug information supplier, make sure that Lexi is on your list.

And if you are thinking about building your own ePrescribing module, I call your attention to a posting my colleague Matt Bennardo published last week:

As your user base grows, eprescribing fees grow too
Bring features in-house makes it easier to respond to specific customer needs
A third-party solution is a risk, as you never can be sure what will happen in the market

Contact Lexicomp using the links on this page today for more information.

Growing EHR? Time to build your own eprescriber? Here's how

Friday, March 2, 2012 by Matt Bennardo

As your user base grows, eprescribing fees grow too
Bring features in-house makes it easier to respond to specific customer needs
A third-party solution is a risk, as you never can be sure what will happen in the market

Contact Lexicomp using the links on this page today for more information.

Are you developing EMRs and practice management systems where speed to market is critical?

Monday, December 19, 2011 by David Wilkof

Are you developing EMRs and practice management systems where speed to market is critical? One of the modules of such systems is the inclusion of drug information. Since this is neither the expertise of your developers nor your content people, it is important to identify the preferred drug information provider early in the process. Four criteria are critical in making this decision. First, quality of information. Second, flexibility of design and APIs. Third, simplicity of data structure. Fourth, and very important, customer support during the development period and after release. More and more EMRs are now using Lexicomp drug information as part of their offering. And there is a reason for that.

Electronic Prescribing

Monday, December 12, 2011 by Ryan Smith

ePrescribing is offered as a way to prevent medication errors that arise due to difficulties in reading or understanding handwritten prescriptions. ePrescribing could also reduce adverse drug events (ADEs) by making information such as drug interactions and contraindications available to prescribers at the time they are preparing a prescription.

Lexi-Data is the foundation of Lexicomp's clinical decision support architecture is quickly becoming the standard for when companies need an up-to-date comprehensive drug database. This product provides patient specific alerts and referential content to support sound treatment decisions in areas such as drug interaction checking (drug-drug and drug-food), drug allergy checking, therapeutic duplication checking, RxNorm Mappings, supports Surescripts Certification, Drug Classifications, dose range checking (adult and pediatric), Patient Education, and more.

Development slowed by your drug information database provider? 3 tips!

Sunday, November 27, 2011 by Matt Bennardo

EMR and EHR vendors are discovering that the responsiveness of their data providers can have a big impact on their ability to get certification or get to market. This is especially true in drug interaction databases, where the quality of the data can affect crucial product goals like Meaningful Use certification or SureScripts eprescribing certification.

Even beyond certification, a data provider can affect how quickly you can develop new features, respond to customer requests, or even whether you can develop new and necessary functionality at all. In many ways, a drug information vendor is one of a health IT developer's most important partners.

What if the partnership doesn't work out?
Real problems can arise if this partner is unresponsive or doesn't provide the expected level of customer service and new feature development. An EHR or EMR can literally be left treading water in situations such as these. What to do? Here are three tips.

1. "Bolt on" additional functionality: For some functionality, it's possible to lease an already-certified third-party solution that will help you meet short-term needs if your own development is stalled. The classic case for this electronic prescribing -- many EMR developers use pre-existing third-party eprescribing modules to get them to market faster while developing their own. One provider of such modules is DoseSpot.

2. Use web services to easily integrate multiple sources: Sometimes a single source just doesn't have everything you need, but maintaining multiple in-house databases can be costly and time-consuming. For specific bits of information you want to add -- for instance, patient education documents in foreign languages -- it may be easiest to access a second vendor using web services. This puts the responsibility for maintaining the data on the vendor, and leaves you with a much smaller development and maintenance task. One drug data provider, Lexicomp, now supplies much core functionality through web services, including all major Meaningful Use Stage 1 items.

3. Cut the anchor as soon as you can: Sometimes all you can do is look for another provider. The two items above can help you in some circumstances, but for core functionality you may need to cut your losses. The earlier you can identify a bad relationship, the better. One customer of Lexicomp came to us after unsuccessfully trying to work with another vendor's dataset. After a short while with the other database, they knew it wasn't right, and so they were able to painlessly replace the data with Lexicomp's. In less than a month after that, their product was live.

The moral of the story is that your drug vendor relationships are crucial to your success. If they don't feel right, then stop and look for alternatives. A slight delay upfront is better than being trapped with a vendor who makes it more difficult for you to meet your customers' needs and innovate new features.

Predicted consolidation of EMR and EHR vendors takes a twist

Friday, March 18, 2011 by Matt Bennardo

Predictions about consolidation in the EMR, EHR, and HIS marketplace are nothing new. A colleague of mine wrote about the likelihood of consolidation all the way back in October. Hard to believe that post was written almost five months ago -- and since then, the marketplace has only grown more glutted. (ONC has added three more certifying bodies since that post was written to deal with the onslaught of new systems that need to be evaluated for Meaningful Use, including SureScripts as an ePrescribing certifier.)

But a recent announcement that human resources giant ADP is acquiring an EMR points to a surprising twist that few people expected.

Although the details of this specific acquisition may not have been easy to foresee, it does fit a long-standing trend that has only been gaining momentum lately. Walking the exhibit floor at HIMSS, there was no shortage of large corporations setting their sites on the healthcare technology market in one way or another: Google, Intel, Cisco, CDW, Microsoft, Rubbermaid, to name just a few. This is a growth industry, and everybody wants to be a player.

Much of my colleague's analysis and advice from in October still holds true today, with this new kind of consolidation thrown in the mix.

"I would imagine that the companies that are able to stay ahead of the curve will continue to grow, but can the 500+ EMR and EHR vendors all survive this regulation wave? If you are an EMR or EHR vendor, choosing the best drug information provider is critical because time to market is vital.

So how do you choose the right provider? You should expect that your drug information vendor offer a variety of delivery options such as database tables that are compatible with Oracle®, SQL Server®, and MySQL® . The vendor should also provide a Software Development Kit (SDK) powered by Java™ or .NET APIs. Drug Databases are generally extremely normalized and complicated to navigate so utilizing a light weight and easy to use API and save tremendous time. The vendor should provide a high level of customer service and demonstrate a sense of urgency to client requests. They should also earn your loyalty by listening attentively and understand your needs, and then deliver a solution that translates into a mutually beneficial arrangement for both organizations."

To date, Lexicomp has helped many EMR and EHR companies not only pass muster with ONC regulations, but stand out in the crowded field by getting to market faster with powerful and customizable functionality and the highest quality medication available. Contact Lexicomp today to learn more!

Meaningful Use, ICD-10, and HIPAA implementations compete for IT resources

Monday, March 14, 2011 by Matt Bennardo

Back in January, I wrote about how the rush to meet meaningful use regulations (both to get incentives and to avoid penalties) was creating a shortage of IT workers in healthcare. What I didn't mention at the time is that the crunch is compounded by yet more federal regulations that put deadlines around the ICD-10 switchover and HIPAA privacy and security requirements into the same timeframe as meaningful use.

Not only are hospitals and EMR or HIS vendors competing with each other for meaningful use know-how, but their IT departments are faced with several different sets of deadlines. Luckily, the advice I gave back in January still applies today. Here it is again:

1. Ask Your Vendors About the Support They Provide

No one else is going to build your system for you, but some vendors are more willing to help than others. For instance, Lexicomp (a provider of medication lists and drug interaction databases) is dedicated to providing superior customer service to its growing list of clients. This includes powerful APIs to cut programming time, as well as personalized responses to questions, code samples, and more. Having an expert partner in your vendor can cut development time significantly!

2. Consider "Add-On" Modules for Some Functionality

Some EHR vendors are finding that it's easier to "bolt on" a pre-built e-prescribing or CPOE module than to develop one themselves. For some companies, this is a temporary solution to get to market faster while waiting for their own module to be certified by Surescripts. For others, it's more a matter of long term strategic development priorities. Either way, one vendor that's helping EHR vendors get to market faster this way is DoseSpot.

3. Do Your Homework!

The old carpenter's adage of "measure twice, cut once" could easily apply to the HIT market today. There's a temptation to rush forward as fast as possible -- but a hasty decision on a key vendor (like a provider of drug interaction information) could cause unforeseen problems down the road. So make sure you do your homework and investigate different options for each vendor relationship.

APIs can make the difference in EHR readiness

Monday, March 7, 2011 by Matt Bennardo

A recent blog post by an EHR IT specialist outlines 20 different roles that a company developing EHR, EMR or HIS software must fill. The list is a sobering reminder of the vast array of tasks that EHR vendors must address before their product is ready for primetime use among healthcare providers.

Some of the roles on the list are general IT needs, like useability experts and database administrators. But others are unique to healthcare IT, like the ominous reference to "HL7 and healthcare data integration conformance engineers". That's the kind of specialized role that is both crucial to EHR development and subject to the greatest competitive pressures. What are the odds of finding an IT professional who can just glide into that role?

With many IT departments under-manned due to intense competition for talent and with so many "must-have" skill sets jockeying for those limited resources, many EHR vendors are making strategic decisions about where their tech staff should be spending its time. One way to free up resources is to partner with a drug information vendor that offers robust APIs which can speed the development of clinical decision support systems. Lexicomp is one such company that offers thorough API support for functionality like drug-drug interaction checking, drug-allergy interaction checking, duplicate therapy, and a myriad of reference look-ups. It's one quick way to get a jumpstart on much of the functionality required by HITECH "Meaningful Use" regulations.

Likewise, many EHR vendors are also adding on pre-certified ePrescribing or CPOE modules, rather than developing their own right now. These are "stand-alone" modules that already have SureScripts certification, and which can be integrated quickly into any EHR platform. DoseSpot is a good example of a company which can offer this.

Both of these options can ease the IT crunch and get your EHR market-ready sooner. Without these options, many EHR vendors may find themselves at the back of the pack when it comes time to sign up customers or qualify users for incentive dollars.

How to Survive the Meaningful Use IT Crunch

Monday, January 24, 2011 by Matt Bennardo

One thing is for sure about the government's Meaningful Use schedule: it's created an enormous amount of demand for talented IT professionals in healthcare informatics. So much demand, in fact, that many HIT and EHR vendors won't be able to fill all the open positions they have -- jeopardizing product delivery dates that customers are counting on.

Whether or not you're currently short-staffed, it's best to plan defensively. In a market like this where time is of the essence, there's no telling when your top developers might get big offers from the EHR vendor down the street... How do you defend yourself?

1. Ask Your Vendors About the Support They Provide!

No one else is going to build your system for you, but some vendors are more willing to help than others. For instance, Lexicomp (a provider of medication lists and drug interaction databases) is dedicated to providing superior customer service to its growing list of clients. This includes powerful APIs to cut programming time, as well as personalized responses to questions, code samples, and more. Having an expert partner in your vendor can cut development time significantly!

2. Consider "Add-On" Modules for Some Functionality

Some EHR vendors are finding that it's easier to "bolt on" a pre-built e-prescribing or CPOE module than to develop one themselves. For some companies, this is a temporary solution to get to market faster while waiting for their own module to be certified by Surescripts. For others, it's more a matter of long term strategic development priorities. Either way, one vendor that's helping EHR vendors get to market faster this way is DoseSpot.

3. Do Your Homework!

The old carpenter's adage of "measure twice, cut once" could easily apply to the HIT market today. There's a temptation to rush forward as fast as possible -- but a hasty decision on a key vendor (like a provider of drug interaction information) could cause unforeseen problems down the road. So make sure you do your homework and investigate different options for each vendor relationship.

One easy way to get to know potential vendors is at a tradeshow. Both of the vendor examples given here -- Lexicomp and DoseSpot -- will be exhibiting together as partners at HIMSS 2011. The show is February 21 - 23 in Orlando, Florida.

Growth in ePrescribing Continues

Friday, December 31, 2010 by David White

The number of healthcare professionals utilizing ePrescribing has steadily increased in the past year as federal policy initiatives continue to drive the growth of clinical decision support tools. At a recent meeting in Washington D.C., Surescripts announced that more than 200,000 office-based clinicians now utilize this means of prescription writing.

Surescripts also revealed that 47 states more than doubled their use of ePrescribing routing, and 29 states more than doubled their use of ePresbribing benefit information. Additionally, the company published a ranking of the top 10 states adopting ePrescribing and these are listed below in order.

Massachusettes
Michigan
Rhode Island
Delaware
North Carolina
Connecticut
Pennsylvania
Hawaii
Indiana
Florida

Are you in EHR vendor looking to enter the market? Choosing a state with a high adoption of ePrescribing usage would be a good place to target your launch. In addition to geography, you should also consider the drug databases that power your ePrescribing module. Lexicomp offers the best medication databases designed to alert prescribers of duplicate therapy considerations, dosage range checking and drug interactions. Contact Lexicomp today to learn more about how to enhance your clinical decision support system with Lexi-Data.

Will additional certifying bodies improve the EHR Meaningful Use certification process?

Friday, December 17, 2010 by Mark Dachille

On Friday, December 10th, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT named two additional organizations as authorized testing and certification bodies under a temporary certification program for electronic health record systems. The new additions bring the total number of approved certification bodies to five, including ICSA Labs, SLI Global Solutions, the Certification Commission for Health IT, the Drummond Group, and InfoGard Laboratories.

By adding additional certification bodies, the hope is that increased competition will keep costs down and increase the bandwidth of the certification process. As has been seen with other processes like ePrescribing certification with Surescripts, if there are not enough certifying bodies to meet demand, a log jam can quickly occur and have a significant detrimental impact on the availability of certified EHR products that can meet the needs of individual physicians.

Only time will tell if the certification process creates a log jam in the future, but additional certification bodies should only help to avert this issue.

What role will health information exchanges (HIE) play with meaningful use?

Friday, December 10, 2010 by Matt Bennardo

Health information exchanges (HIEs) are the hot topic of the moment in healthcare IT circles. But like many recent such hot topics, at this point it's still a concept in search of a definition. So if you're not sure yet what an HIE is or what benefits they're supposed to bring, you're not alone.

There are any number of white papers and assessments you can read on HIEs that look at this trend from any number of angles. So far what's clear about HIEs is that there's money at stake, the government is involved and likely to increase its participation, and there are a multitude of models being tried for their viability.

More confusion over meaningful use responsibility
For EHR vendors, this is one more item of uncertainty in an already tumultuous world of meaningful use requirements, certification rules (both Surescripts and ONC-ATCB), and rapidly changing customer expectations. Particularly interesting are findings that more HIEs are now considering taking a more active role in clinical decision support systems -- potentially providing functionality that EHR vendors were expecting to support.

Of 200 HIEs survey for eHealth Initiative's seventh annual survey (entitled: The State of Health Information Exchange in 2010: Connecting the Nation to Achieve Meaningful Use), a small but growing number (about 10% - 20%) said they were pursuing implementation of such clinical decision support functions as ePrescribing, drug interaction checking, patient education, and exchange of medicine lists and other data elements.

More evidence of an uncertain future
What's the ultimate end point for this? Will HIEs end up helping practices and hospitals achieve meaningful use outside of simple data exchange? Will this have any impact on EHR systems? Right now, there's too little agreement on the role of HIEs to tell for sure. But this is one more developing facet of the ever-changing landscape of health information technology to keep watching.

The certified EHR floodgates are open, and won't be closed now

Friday, December 3, 2010 by Matt Bennardo

Just a couple months ago, there were only a handful of ONC-ATCB certified EHR vendors... But as of the end of November, there were 130 products with more added almost every day. Some observers are predicting as many as 200 certified products by the end of the year.

What does all this mean? For hospitals and healthcare practices, it means that their list of options for qualifying for meaningful use money is rapidly expanding. And for EHR vendors, ONC-ATCB certification is no longer a potential differentiator in the marketplace, but a must-have for doing business.

It's only going to get more crowded from here
Infogard, the third ONC approved certifying body, issued their first EHR certification at the end of November. With CCHIT and Drummond both running at full tilt as well, this means that there won't be a certification logjam like there is with Surescripts and ePrescribing.

And many EHR vendors aren't waiting for Surescripts to get certified for meaningful use. While they wait for approval for their in-house CPOE or ePrescribing functionality, they're bolting on already-approved ePrescribing modules to their products in order to get out the door faster. Signing up customers and establishing a presence in the market is the name of the game.

Time is running out to stake your claim
As an EHR vendor, you need to ensure both that your product stands out from the crowd and that you get to market as quickly as possible. This means you need to pick your professional partners carefully.

Lexicomp can help you differentiate yourself with clinical decision support and drug information that goes well beyond meaningful use requirements. Lexicomp supports dose range checking and duplicate therapy checking, as well as more detailed and user-friendly drug interaction checking.

In addition, Lexicomp offers a set of powerful APIs and superior customer service that let your developers make use of clinical information quickly and easily so they can focus on other priorities. With certification schedules and an ever-growing field of competitors, time is of the essence. Lexicomp is ready to help you meet your deadlines!

Can RX Norm be used for a drug vocabulary?

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 by Darik Warnke

If wanting to use RX Norms database from the NLM site please use caution. This information was meant to be used for interoperability vs a straight drug list/vocabulary. Here are some specific reasons from a customer that tried and found out the limitations.

1. No supported API and substantial learning curve on how the data is organized

2. At this time SureScripts does not allow RxNorm for the Benefits and Med History Certification

3. RxNorm is still changing quite a bit. NDF-RT had been added/new terminology types (MIN [multi ingredient concept])

4. Distribution model for RxNorm is still a bit convoluted (does not seem to be a publication service to know when there is a new version to pull down)

5. RxNorm does not provided Duplicate Therapy, Drug-Drug interactions and Drug-Allergy warning information (CCHIT must)

Physicians shouldn't wait too long before evaluating eprescribing alternatives

Friday, October 29, 2010 by David Wilkof

The number of physicians utilizing eprescribing as their main method for writing prescriptions is increasing. Why? First, because it is more efficient. Second, government mandates will soon require that eprescribing be used to maximize reimbursement. So how many people are using eprescribing?

According to Surescripts, operator of a national eprescribing network, more than 200,000 office-based prescribers in the United States now use electronic prescribing technology. As part of these eprescribing applications, the practitioner is expecting robust drug information to be included. Issues of drug interactions, therapeutic dosages, drug nomenclature, pediatric dosing charts, pediatric dose calculations, medication brand names, duplicate drug therapy and more, are all part of the information that practitioners are looking for when they use an eprescribing tool.

If you are a physician, you should be checking into EMR alternatives the allow for eprescribing. When the mad scramble to comply starts in a year or two, you don't want to be in the fray. Not only that, there will be incentives for those early adopters.

Check out Lexi-Comp or Cerner/Multum as possible providers.

Integrating ePrescribing into EMR Systems

Friday, October 8, 2010 by David White

According to Surescripts, operator of a national e-prescribing network, more than 200,000 office-based prescribers in the United States now use electronic prescribing technology. As part of these eprescribing applications, the practitioner is expecting robust drug information to be included. Issues of drug interactions, therapeutic dosages, drug nomenclature, pediatric dosing charts, pediatric dose calculations, medication brand names, duplicate drug therapy and more, are all part of the information that practitioners are looking for when they use an eprescribing tool.

Are you developing an EMR or EHR and need to make sure you have a top source of drug information? There are actually just a few providers of this information, including Lexi-Comp and Cerner/Multum. Make sure you don't wait to the end of your development process to decide which provider you are going with.

Will we see consolidation in the EMR space?

Wednesday, October 6, 2010 by Ryan Smith

I think that we are all aware of the various discussion topics in the EMR and EHR space related to Meaningful Use requirements, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) incentive requirements, and SureScripts Certification. The latest news was that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology named the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), Drummond Group Inc., and InfoGard Laboratory, Inc. as the initial Authorized Testing and Certification Bodies for the electronic health records certification program. I would imagine that the companies that are able to stay ahead of the curve will continue to grow however, can the 500+ EMR and EHR vendors all survive this regulation wave? If you are an EMR or EHR vendor, choosing the best drug information provider is critical because time to market is vital.

So how do you choose the right provider? You should expect that your drug information vendor offer a variety of delivery options such as database tables that are compatible with Oracle®, SQL Server®, and MySQL® . The vendor should also provide a Software Development Kit (SDK) powered by Java™ or .NET APIs. Drug Databases are generally extremely normalized and complicated to navigate so utilizing a light weight and easy to use API and save tremendous time. The vendor should provide a high level of customer service and demonstrate a sense of urgency to client requests. They should also earn your loyalty by listening attentively and understand your needs, and then deliver a solution that translates into a mutually beneficial arrangement for both organizations.