Epic® electronic health record (EHR) dreams really do come true.
The number one KLAS rated and most robust EHR system is upgrading from InterSystems® Caché® to InterSystems’ next-generation data management platform, IRIS™. This upgrade opens new possibilities and modernization capabilities for Epic clients that were previously unavailable.
IRIS is used in thousands of production implementations in virtually every industry, according to InterSystems’. Its features include advanced database management, interoperability, and machine learning and analytics. Healthcare IT News reports that it also allows clients to “develop and deploy applications in public and private clouds, with security architecture encrypting data in transit and at rest.”
Over 250 million patients have a health record in Epic, making the EHR giant InterSystems’ largest customer. The IRIS Data Platform vastly extends the patient data capabilities of those organizations using Epic. Native interoperability between the two platforms will enable and support a broad range of analytics to boost clinician access to patient data and improve patient care. It also provides enhanced scalability and disaster recovery capabilities.
These enhancements and new capabilities are reason enough for enthusiasm around the mandated upgrade, but there are also four major opportunities that Epic clients can take advantage of specifically.
4 current challenges and opportunities for Epic clients
1. Platform independent licensing–reduced CAPEX/OPEX
Previously, Epic clients were restricted to IBM Power for their Epic infrastructure. With the upgrade, clients can now choose to stay on IBM Power or migrate to a different platform, such as Intel® Xeon® Scalable processor, with no additional cost in future upgrades and migrations. Platform selection may significantly impact operational performance and cost.
Epic clients can now select an option, technology and architecture that fits their healthcare IT organization’s unique requirements. Of course, selecting the right platform is easier said than done. And this is where integration solution experts who specialize in healthcare IT become extremely useful to help navigate the platform selection and provide an upgrade roadmap.
2. Predictable and flexible refresh cycle
There’s a significant cost associated with upgrading infrastructure for Epic every 3-4 years, and that cost may increase over time depending on the platform you select. However, the upgrade to IRIS presents an opportunity for Epic clients to modernize their infrastructure, which will enable predictability of and flexibility around refresh cycles, reducing associated costs and maximizing the life of their infrastructure.
3. Cloud ready–DR modernization
Epic clients can now adopt the best technology available while reducing IT costs with a cloud DR solution. Exploring DR in the cloud can be very challenging based on the platform you are on and your capacity/utilization requirements. However, the right on-prem technology mixed with the right cloud hosted technology will reduce cost and give organizations the most flexibility, performance, reliability and experience.
4. Continuous availability
Customers may migrate from SMP to ECP if they decide Intel Xeon is the better platform for them. A new architecture involves understanding what an ECP platform switch means and the level of operational management involved. But the continuous availability of an ECP architecture can facilitate migration from SMP to ECP with minimal impact to IT and clinical users if done at the right time.
Electronic health record modernization is now
Whatever architecture is right for your EHR data management system, you now have more options and more flexibility to tailor that architecture to fit your needs and requirements. It’s this flexibility that can help you optimize the modernization of your data management infrastructure.
Upgrading is always a process, but with the implementation of next-generation technology comes business growth, future readiness, and better patient experience.
More Info Provided By
Sirius has long partnered with both VMware and Intel to design best-of-breed solutions for organizations that provide world-class performance, flexibility, productivity and savings. Now, a new generation of technologies from Intel, InterSystems, and VMware offer significant advances in scalable, high-throughput solutions for Epic’s electronic health record (EHR) systems. Listen in to this episode of This Week in Health as Sirius Healthcare experts answer many questions around upgrading from Cache to IRIS.
