When it comes to increasing productivity, especially healthwise, having an app on your phone is a huge help. Now, apps let you schedule doctor’s visits without picking up the phone and calling the office. Some apps let you avoid the long line at the register by letting you pay for things digitally and keep tabs on your bills.
Most popular app stores currently have over 350,000 mHealth apps available. Finding the perfect app can enhance the user experience, but with so many options, how do you choose the perfect app? If you don’t know what to look at, how can you tell if the app is right for you? Voila! Epic App Orchard assists in filtering unimportant medical apps.
With Epic App, patients, healthcare organizations, and clinicians can focus on only the most important medical apps. Come along, and let’s walk you through the Epic App Orchard, its main competitor, and how it enhances clinical operations. Now, let’s begin.
Table of Contents
Epic App Orchard: A Brief Overview
Epic App Orchard is a platform that helps medical staff, health providers, and patients select the best app. All apps anchored as medical or healthcare solutions are searchable on Epic App Orchard. The apps are put into different groups on the platform to make it easier to find the right software for you. Epic App Orchard details the variables a person takes into account when selecting an app to download and use. Details regarding an app are put under five headings:
- A summary of the app: When you click on an app on Epic App Orchard, you’ll see a short overview of the app’s characteristics and capabilities. Consumers can better weigh each app’s benefits and drawbacks with more information.
- The current app version and the time it was last updated: Knowing the exact month and year of the app’s most recent update is useful for determining whether or not it is still being maintained. With each new update, the developers iron out any kinks and add new features to make the program better for users.
- The company that developed the app: You are more likely to find success with apps developed by a well-known and trusted company. It could be your healthcare provider, your school (if you are a student or a professor), or your place of employment (if you are a healthcare worker).
- The apps’ identifying tags: Tags provides insight into the app’s primary features and explain its intended use to the customer. Various fields include administration, patient access and operations, patient experience, and so on. Once again, this makes it much easier to find the optimal app quickly.
- Reviews: When deciding which app to download and use, reviews from other app users are important. Reading reviews might give you an idea of what it’s like to use the app. Through reviews, you can get answers to questions such as “Does the advertised function or feature work?” When used as intended, does the program perform as expected? Do any problems or bugs exist?
Cerner’s Open Developer Environment
Cerner is one of the major competitors to Epic. The Open Developer Environment is to Cerner what the App Orchard is to Epic. Cerner’s inspiration for CODE (short for Cerner Open Developer Experience) is an open environment where the industry works together to solve health system and consumer demands. The Cerner Open Developer Experience encourages entrepreneurs and developers in this field to design apps that work across existing EHRs.
Incorporating the Epic App Orchard as your EHR
Using the Epic App Orchard tools, hospitals that use Epic as their EHR can quickly and easily record patient interactions with patients, payers, and healthcare teams. Once a registration has been made, it is easily mapped to the corresponding patient record. The record is then used to ensure that the correct money is paid, that the best care is given, that the best ways to communicate are used, and that everyone on staff is on the same page.
Epic App Orchard integration ensures the user has a smoother and more streamlined experience. Features exclusive to Epic’s App Orchard integration include:
- Data is automatically indexed to the patient record in Epic.
- Topnotch clients’ confidentiality and privacy.
- A reduction in manual data entry.
- Improved productivity.
Insight into Patient Outcomes with Epic’s Integrated Program
The App Orchard offers a new chance for hospitals and developers to collaborate and benefit from the innovation of a free market. With Epic Integration, hospitals can improve patient outcomes using standard-based interfaces and APIs, such as CDS Hooks, FHIR, and SMART on FHIR. In addition, they will have access to Epic’s specifically designed interoperability solutions.
Also, the program makes it possible for App Orchard to publicly offer unique integrations for clinics and businesses. Popular Epic integrations include some of the following:
- The Epic App Orchard now features the PatientTrak Text Messaging app, which integrates with Epic to allow for text messaging between patients and medical staff. The PatientTrak app lets those using Epic keep patients and their loved ones updated on their care via text messaging.
- PatientIQ’s SMART on FHIR application can be integrated and incorporated directly into Epic’s electronic health record (EHR), which will speed up the time it takes to collect patient-reported outcomes.
Why is Epic App Orchard Membership preferred to just Epic Integration?
Some businesses may brag about integrating Epic’s software, but is it enough? How can an app benefit from joining the Epic App Orchard?
The Epic App Orchard membership lends credibility to whatever solution an app provides. Before the App Orchard, Epic Integration relied on manual sanity checks because there was no formal procedure. So, even if an app got the API and worked well when added to a customer’s website, it couldn’t get certified.
With the App Orchard, Epic now provides a staging area where apps may submit a transaction to be checked for proper processing and presentation. Users can feel safe knowing that any app listed on Epic’s platform has been tested and approved. Being listed on the App Orchard means they’ve followed the standard guidelines and requirements.
Does Epic App Orchard currently include the Validic Software in its listing?
Yes! Epic’s App Orchard makes it easy and quick for Validic’s clients to add Impact to their electronic health records. Putting Epic’s APIs into Validic Software makes it easier for people to sign up for and use Impact by pre-filling the enrollment form with patient information.
Usually, when healthcare providers want to use remote patient monitoring (RPM) to get access to important patient data, they have to open a new app and remember yet another login. After that, doctors must type the information into the EHR by hand or upload PDF screenshots to add it to the patient’s chart. With Epic App’s Validic Impact, these labor-intensive tasks are now automated.
In Conclusion
Most apps that are made for mobile devices are made to make our lives easier. As the number of digital health apps grows, consumers now have a lot of choices. Each piece of software is made for a different reason and tries to solve a different problem. Furthermore, numerous apps are interchangeable due to their shared features and purposes.
When trying to figure out which of the many health apps is best for them, patients and doctors may feel overwhelmed. Epic App Orchard gives clients direct access to Epic’s resources and developers. It also makes it easier for vendors to work with their EHR and solve all health app-related problems.