Fujitsu, Osmosyz Offer First Scan Platform For EMR
Standard Compliance
By Lisa Reider, BLI Senior Product Editor,
Scanners and Environmental
Fujitsu and software company, Osmosyz, have teamed up
to offer a one-of-a-kind solution to help medical offices across the country
comply with new electronic document standards, which outline certain filing and
indexing rules for electronic health records that will increase patient record
interoperability among participating health facilities. This system will
replace hard copy file transfers and faxing of patient files and medical
records.
As a part of the Obama administration’s American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, medical offices and healthcare
facilities have been urged to digitize patient records for a more efficient and
accurate means of healthcare communication among doctors and offices. This push
for electronic medical records may also reduce overall long term medical costs
by reducing filing errors and manual labor.
Upgrading an entire industry is a big endeavor,
requiring planning and guidance. While some guidelines for electronic records were
already in place, the medical industry lacked a standard for “unstructured
documents,” which are basically static digital images of hard copies. The
industry needed to outline the type of data to be included with the record, and
the format for the data. Fujitsu and Osmosyz worked with HL7, a non-profit
organization, to create a set of guidelines to help define the type of patient
information that should be extracted from unstructured documents. While the
unstructured document standard was approved by HL7 in August, 2010, it was just
recently recognized as a national standard by the Office of the National
Coordinator for Health Information Technology to support “Meaningful Use,” a
component of Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Based on its work
with the unstructured document standard, Fujitsu says it is the only scanner
manufacturer to offer a solution that supports Meaningful Use Stage 1
requirements. Stages 2 and 3 of “Meaningful Use,” which include additional
rules for electronic data, are currently under development.
According to Fujitsu, some medical offices will be
eligible for government funding to update to an EMR (electronic medical record)
system if they can demonstrate “meaningful use” of such technology—for example,
if they adopted and implemented an EMR system to replace a fax system. The
earlier an office adopts the new system, the more funding they may receive—as long as they implement the
new system prior to 2014. Medical offices that do not comply with the new
standard by that time may also face penalties, such as a loss in government
funding.
With Osmosyz Inofile ChartMD software, which
integrates with any Fujitsu network scanner, medical professionals can scan
batches of patient records from the scanner’s touch-screen control panel and
automatically link them to the correct patient. To do this, they simply select
a patient’s file from the associated EMR system, scan a batch of patient
records, index the forms using a pre-set indexing template and the new records
are automatically linked to the patient’s EMR. ChartMD’s integration with
Fujitsu network scanners also provides on-screen indexing. The scanned and
indexed patient files can then be automatically routed to an EMR database such
as those created by Aprima, which also worked with the two companies to develop
this seamless workflow.
While Fujitsu scanners can be purchased via any
authorized Fujitsu scanner reseller, Inofile ChartMD can be purchased as a
monthly subscription service. Depending on the feature set, the subscription
service ranges from $10 to $80 a month. The Fujitsu ScanSnap fi-6010N has a
suggested retail price of $2,995 while the smaller ScanSnap N1800 retails for
$1,895.
Twitter
