New York-based IT company Altera Digital Health says its Microsoft Azure-built Paragon Denali electronic health record is now generally available to healthcare systems.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
The new electronic health record, available as software-as-a-service, brings cloud services to rural, critical access and community hospitals, according to an announcement from the company last week.
A cloud-based EHR provides greater system reliability and data accessibility that can support an organization’s growth and user experiences with lower hardware and maintenance costs and advanced security controls.
Meghan Bisping, chief information officer of El Segundo, California-based Pipeline Health System, told Paragon that the company has provided time and support to help the health care system “meet the rising demands of health care.”
“Paragon has been a vital investment for our healthcare system and has driven best EHR practices in our hospitals,” she said in a statement released by the com.
Mark Bruno, executive vice president of Paragon at Altera, noted that the new EHR is intended to help community hospitals, which generally have fewer resources than larger healthcare systems.
“But they must deal with many of the same regulatory requirements, financial pressures and IT complexities,” he said.
THE BIG TREND
Cloud-based EHRs, robotic process automation and technologies provide a lifeline for rural and community hospitals.
“People often forget that rural and community hospitals do many of the same things as large health care systems, from revenue cycle to regulatory reporting,” says Dr. Mark Pratt, chief medical officer at Altera, whose Paragon products have their roots in the former Allscripts. , Healthcare IT News told in June.
“These are still very complex organizations that share many of the same challenges as large hospitals, but with fewer resources,” he said.
The Paragon system isn’t the only updated EHR introduced in recent days. This past week, Oracle previewed its own new AI-based electronic health record, built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and providing secure automation of clinical workflows, enabling faster insights at the point of care with streamlined documentation and more.
ON THE RECORD
“The cloud represents a new era for healthcare, allowing organizations to respond to evolving clinical and operational pressures while providing providers with robust data and AI-driven capabilities,” said Todd Mersch, general manager of health and life sciences at Microsoft , in a statement. .
Bruno added that Paragon Denali is designed to “meet the unique needs” of rural and community hospitals and “enable them to steadily evolve with the entire industry.”
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.