Developing software as complex as CIS is no easy task. Each clinic and doctor is unique, each with his or her own needs and desires for an electronic medical record system. It would be impossible to build everyone’s idea of the perfect EMR system without providing a fully customized – and therefore, very expensive – system to each and every clinic. At P & P, however, we do our best to listen to our doctors, nurses, and staff in order to develop a system that meets the needs of as many people as possible.
There are a few methods our development team uses to make sure our clients’ needs are heard and incorporated into the software.
- Client Input: As our development team begins a new cycle of updates, we collect development requests for new features from our clients. We look for features that are requested over and over again, and consider the reasons behind other feature requests. Requests are ranked by urgency, but whatever we can fit into our development cycle, we do our best to accomplish. Our development manager may visit clients requesting extensive changes in order to get a feel for their workflow and how.
- Client Feedback: As development planning, our development manager contacts and visits clients who have requested some of the new features in order to get feedback on initial designs of the new features, or feedback on workflow of the new features within the system. In this step, our clients are given a chance to suggest changes to any part of the feature, and bring up considerations our development team may have been unaware of.
- Beta Sites: Once the development on a release has finished and it has moved through a number of cycles of testing, our team installs the software at a few clinics that have agreed to be beta testers for the new features. These clinics have committed to working closely with P & P to ensure the new features are bug free and accomplish the purpose they were meant to. At this point, a new feature can still undergo dramatic changes if the workflow of the feature in the system doesn’t work in practical use in a live clinic environment.
Our development team finds listening to our clients’ feedback invaluable in the planning and development process. It is always our goal to build an EMR system that fits the vision of those who use it every day.
Are you a P & P client, hoping to see some specific changes to our software? Are you interested in participating in the development process, and willing to experiment with new features that might not be fully polished and ready to go? Get in touch with us at your convenience to inquire about joining our team of beta sites. We want to hear what you have to say.