RPA technology extending legacy EMR systems
Tags: webdev, ai, productivity, automation
Published: 2024-04-29 09:32:45

_This post is a quick overview of an Abto Software [blog article](https://www.abtosoftware.com/blog/rpa-technology-extending-legacy-emr-systems)._

Electronic medical record systems are essential to gather, store, manage, as well as share health information. They accommodate patient registration, clinical documentation, medication prescription and management, and other important processes.

In this quick overview, we dive deeper into the benefits of integrating robotic process automation technology to extend EMR systems, in particular to resolve common challenges coming with legacy software.

## Why legacy EMR systems are no longer efficient?

Widespread legacy electronic medical record systems are associated with outdated record-keeping systems. Healthcare providers utilize those to manage medical and medication records, and other patient information. Such legacy EMR systems were implemented before contemporary cloud-based solutions became popularized. Healthcare professionals typically struggle using those, as they are characterized by limitations talking about important functionality.

Already outdated healthcare software is usually installed on-premises and requires dedicated maintenance. Most commonly, such software is lacking customization and decision-support capabilities, analytics, reporting, and other on-demand features.

## How legacy EMR systems present multiple business challenges

### Security vulnerabilities

Most commonly, already out-of-date EMR software does not receive necessary security updates and patches. That means increased probability of suffering data breaches, insider threats, phishing, ransomware, and other security vulnerabilities.

### Integration issues

Quite expected, partially obsolete EMR software is oftentimes not compatible with more modern technology. That means decreased performance, as the limited access to features is deteriorating day-to-day workflows.

### Data inconsistency

Data inconsistency is another serious problem to expect, in particular:

- Poor communication with implemented healthcare technologies might motivate manual processing, thus causing data duplication
- Older, proprietary data formats and irrelevant coding schemes might entangle data standardization, thereby causing data discrepancy
- Legacy applications, if limited in functionality, are struggling when capturing patient information, meaning they might contain inaccurate details, thus impacting clinical decision-making 
- Obsolete applications, if lacking advanced analytics and reporting, might complicate data retrieval, thereby deteriorating pattern identification and monitoring

### Documentation delays

Documentation delays is also a problem quite expected and easy-to-explain:

- Some systems aren’t compatible with personal mobile devices
- Older systems require paper-based documentation methods
- Most commonly, legacy software has inconvenient, hard-to-navigate interfaces
- Another thing, legacy programs typically present slow loading, frequent crashes, and other performance-related deficiencies

## RPA for legacy systems: Abto Software’s case study

Abto Software was contracted by a healthcare provider being challenged by an already obsolete EMR system. Our company, having expertise in providing a range of services for the healthcare segment, has implemented additional functionality without changing mission-critical features of the EMR system.

The upgrade of the partially outdated EMR system wasn’t justified, as there were limited integration options. The approach was complex, time-consuming, expensive, and overall not rational, which made our engineers consider strategies that would both preserve the existing EMR system and facilitate business performance.

The answer was clear – for this particular project, we would go with robotic process automation technology. Having handled similar projects, we knew RPA technology would allow to preserve mission-critical features while implementing lacking ones.

The project’s key objective – to enable appointment scheduling without administrators being overwhelmed. The engineers were focused around minimizing the traditionally hand-handled processes for administrators and enabling appointment scheduling for patients without requiring external assistance.

## RPA for legacy systems: Abto Software’s domain expertise 

We enabled more convenient and independent appointment scheduling without disrupting existing workflows. Account registration, data management, appointment scheduling, rescheduling, cancellations, and associated day-to-day operations can be easily handled without requiring manual processing.

The concept is simple: 

- When registering, the patient is navigated through registration to capture relevant details
- Speaking about appointment scheduling, the patient is prompted to enter personal information, desired date/time, personal and insurance information, medical history, and other important details
- When completed, the appropriate RPA script is generated and executed to enable seamless integration of the captured information into the legacy software
- The generation and execution of the RPA script is monitored to ensure expected output

## Summing up

Abto Software has the specialized expertise to deliver robotic process automation solutions for organizations. Our engineers can cover initial discovery, robotic process automation integration and support to empower strategic-thinking companies. 

Registration, booking, insurance verification, claim processing, inventory management, billing management – these processes and more can easily be optimized by integrating RPA technology.

Our services:

- .NET development
- ASP.NET development
- Web app development
- Mobile app development
- Cloud services
- Full-cycle, custom software development

Our expertise:

- Artificial intelligence, in particular RPA integration
- Computer vision