Benefits

The Modern Clinical Workflow

The adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHR) has been successful in making medical records quickly accessible, transferrable, and an ocean of data that is accelerating research.

Mission accomplished! So, why aren't the practitioners jumping for joy?

Prior to EHRs, many recognized the process of maintaining paper charts as laborious, difficult to manage, and prone to human error. And yet, paper charts with manual processes allowed practitioners to use a variety of manual tools and communication methods to operate autonomously within their clinical environment.

EHRs have done well to solve for digitizing health records and providing the basics for clinical workflows, but they have inadvertently limited the ability for practitioners to act autonomously within their area of expertise.

Speak with a retired doctor or nurse and ask them how long they waited for IT to implement their clinical workflow change.

With the best of intent, IT has become a key stakeholder in nearly all clinical workflow changes relating to the EHR, which is most workflow changes.

Unfortunately, good intentions do not always result in the desired outcomes. Today, clinical groups wait in a virtual line at their IT department to petition for their specific workflows, decisioning, and information tools to be incorporated into their EHR platform.

The frustration and tension between clinical and technical groups has never been more palpable.

But is the IT department really to blame? No.

IT is limited by an undersized budget when compared across business industries and the majority of the money is spent on the EHR. The remaining budget left over is not even close to addressing the overwhelming demand for changes by practitioners and researchers.

In short, the average healthcare IT budget naturally creates an operational bottleneck.

The EHR as a Base Platform

"I thought the EHR was supposed to fix this?" is a common response in this discussion. The paraphrased answer from EHR software companies is "not exactly".

EHRs serve as the software solution for digital charts and accessible records, but EHR software companies acknowledge that they cannot (and will not) attempt to be subject matter experts in clinical disciplines. EHRs are built for common shared patient charts, not the unique workflow of a particular health system or specialty center.

The clinical expertise and human effort to create new clinical tools and disseminate them locally, let alone globally, is outside the area of expertise of an EHR company.

So what now? Now, companies like EVAL can use the EHR as a platform to build upon.

Gratitude. A grateful heart that EHR companies have achieved a significant milestone in moving health records into the digital age and for providing a stable platform for innovators to build upon. EVAL could not begin to exist without the advancements of EHRs and the FHIR interoperability standard.

new technology is required to augment digital health records with tools that allow for practitioners to have more direct control over their workflows. Healthcare will be in a perpetual state of waiting on IT until clinical groups regain the ability to autonomously operate their teams with little to no dependency on IT.

EVAL Health app platform exists for clinicians to regain their operational autonomy digitally.

At the core of EVAL is a clinical app platform driven by a no-code "app builder" tool that practitioners and researchers can learn quickly without any prior technical experience required. With EVAL connected to your EHR, IT can step back with confidence while clinical subject matter experts make clinical decisions and deploy them out instantly to their teams.

Creating, sharing, and deploying clinical apps within the healthcare ecosystem has never been more accessible than it is with EVAL.

In fact, the same solution that allows practitioners to regain their operational autonomy In keeping with our primary mission of improving the speed of research from bench-to-bedside, the same EVAL app builder tools that allow practitioners to regain operational autonomy are the same tools that allow researchers to create practical clinical apps from their research findings.

translate the $80BN of global healthcare research findings being produced annually.

And if practitioners can have autonomy in creating tools, then why not at the same time unlock healthcare researchers with the same ability to translate their findings into practical tools that can be disseminated instantly to practitioners.Additionally, The mission of EVAL Health is to solve the bench-to-bedside gap by creating technology that practitioners and researchers can use to modify their digital workflow safely without the need of IT support.

By incorporating EVAL Health app platform provides a no-coding-required "app builder" tool that practitioners and researchers can learn quickly without any prior technical experience required. Building, sharing, and using a clinical app in cooperation with your EHR

New technology to support the clinicians making decisions is required to accelerate clinical groups to achieve improved patient outcomes.

Regaining the ability for clinical groups to autonomously affect their workflows requires new technology that augments an EHR to achieve Autonomy New technologies need to be built off of the stable EHR platforms now in place

The simple answer to this problem is for clinical groups to regain the ability to literally change their own workflows and establish their own best practices according to their areas of expertise.

Due to the technical nature of EHRs, once implemented at an organization, the ability to change the practitioner daily workflow shifted from clinical departments using their own tools to the IT department programming the EHR.

But what about the days with paper charts when a clinical department had full control over their own workflow? When a clinical manager was able to create a new process or best practice and implement it using traditional human methods?

None of us can blame IT for the limited budget and resources they have to work with. We're all just trying to figure this situation out together.

The IT department doesn't have the budget and are forced to ration their resources by executive direction while managing the tensions created by having to say "no" far to often.

, and the daily job of health IT is often to say "not enough budget". The health IT support community is overwhelmed with requests by clinicians and researchers for specialty workflow changes.

Healthcare organizations do not have IT budgets to meet the ever-changing needs of each department and the problem is only getting more severe as NIH pumps out $50BN in healthcare research annually.

The queue for clinical decision support requests in every health IT group in the world is longer than the IT budget can support.

Organizational transformations are never simple and important capabilities are sometimes forgotten.

due to the technical complexities of software programming. have been introduced into the clinical setting there has been a and the push to have all clinical workflows "online" and paperless, there was at the same time a shift of responsibility to workflow controls away from the practitioner technical difficultly for a practitioner to makeescalated to the point where only IT can introduce organization-wide change Prior to EHRs, healthcare practitioners practitioners and researchers used physical tools to communicate with each other, like paper charts, and paper-based information. Back then, it was much easier to introduce a workflow change organization-wide by introducing new paper forms into the paper charts

Low-code or no-code (LCNC) app development platforms, like EVAL, fill an important niche within enterprise-wide IT initiatives, and give any size organization or clinic an opportunity to compete in the digital ecosystem.

The EVAL platform of digital apps elevates clinical expertise by augmenting practitioners and researchers with tools to collaborate with or without IT support.

Citizen Developers (practitioners, researchers, IT, etc) are now able to create actionable content, influence practice, establish continuity, explore connections, integrate workflows and data analytics, and customize work.

EVAL also meets the industry imperative for interoperability, high level security and regulatory compliance.

Empowering non-technical clinical subject matter experts to influence best practice digitally

Whether you are an E.R. triage nurse, primary care physician, imaging technician, biomedical researcher or clinical business administrator, clinical expertise is paramount to daily practice and clinical outcomes.

Managing information, implementing the latest best practices and communicating to colleagues are critical skill sets to developing and evolving in your role. Additionally, visibility, building a brand and influencing practice are paramount to making a difference across the system.

Citizen development allows organizations to tap into the knowledge and creativity of their workforce expertise.

EVAL's platform elevates the subject matter expert's realm of influence by creating a space for clinicians to augment their skillset as citizen developers by removing many of the IT roadblocks, such as limited resources, a slow development process, and communication breakdowns that can lead to misalignments between IT and the business goals and training requirements to learn new apps.

Additionally, organizations and citizen developers can showcase their apps, bio and brand, and expand their reach of influence throughout the world.

Increased agility and flexibility to quickly adapt to changing requirements, clinical nuance and population needs

Context is a critical component to adopting best practice and improving patient outcomes. Bedside clinicians, ancillary staff and administrators need the ability to translate research findings into the realities of clinical practice. In today’s fast-paced environment, agility and flexibility are crucial for success. Citizen development initiatives empower clinicians to operate as leading innovators with digital tools to customize best practices and quickly adapt workflows and update protocols based on new evidence.

The EVAL platform allows citizen developers to integrate with and build upon other digital apps in the app ecosystem. For example, if a guideline consensus group publishes a decision support app, EVAL users can use the app or embed the app into any new app they create, allowing clinicians to adapt and innovate based on their organizational constraints and the unique needs of the population they serve.

Any citizen developer can create an account in EVAL for free, build an app and publish an app for the EVAL community to use. Additionally, an EVAL user can establish a private library for personal use or establish a private community account for a select group of individuals or organizations. Additionally, EVAL users with access to an app (publicly or privately) can clone an app, modify the app, or embed an app into an existing app and make it available to other users.

Enhanced collaboration and knowledge sharing, encouraging users to innovate and co-create

Silos of expertise perpetuate the knowledge gap. Principal investigators, guideline authors and consensus leaders lack a communal decision support platform to promote their findings in a format that clinicians can engage with and customize at the point of care. Clinician leaders and authors distilling research findings and working within their organizations to promote continuity lack connected, self-help digital tools to consume best practices, share their work and connect within a broader community.

EVAL app platform decentralizes decision support and encourages the citizen developer to emerge at any point along the healthcare continuum. Merging the roles of subject matter expert (SME) and citizen developer, allows anyone to harness the power of EVAL to create practice-based research communities, collect meaningful data, and create connected feedback loops. From the research bench to the bedside, citizen development initiatives empowers users to share their knowledge and expertise, creating a cross-functional culture of continuous learning and improvement.

Integration of workflows and data analytics at the point of care

Making sense of data drives learning and adaptation. Leveraging decision support apps to capture data within custom workflows at the point of care is a vital step toward meaningful information and change. The EVAL platform offers the ability to create a patient chart on the platform and use EVAL apps to conduct an evaluation as a record in the patient chart. Patient charts can also be shared within a private group controlled by a group administrator. EVAL offers additional analytic tools on the platform to capture patient and population-specific trends thus allowing clinicians and life science researchers to measure outcomes, validate which research-backed strategies are working, address disparities, and tailor interventions to specific groups.

However, addressing complex health challenges requires a feedback loop of data-driven decision-making across the continuum of care. As part of the no-code platform, advanced EVAL users will have access to anonymized population-based analytic capabilities to share data and collaborate with other groups on the platform. Researchers, life science organizations, and clinicians will have the ownership and agency on the app platform to quickly customize and operationalize protocols, capture data, and collaborate across specialties around the world in real-time to drive faster, more informed research.

Data interoperability

Access to data in a timely manner facilitates a more holistic view of the care people receive and supports broader public health efforts. The benefits of exchanging data across platforms, such as electronic health records (EHRs), include better care coordination, higher performance, and better experiences. In order to maintain federal certification, the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016 requires EHR systems to provide patient-facing application programming interfaces (APIs) and exchanges that provide secure access to their data. With advances in cloud computing (i.e. Amazon Web Services or AWS) and the development of data standards (e.g. Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources or FHIR and HL7), it has become easier for organizations to move and secure data. Cloud environments provide opportunities to build data pipelines that standardize data to an industry-standard format like FHIR and provide secure access to people who need it.

As a result, platforms, like EVAL, can access EHR data and auto-populate key patient demographics and metrics into the EVAL patient chart. In turn, patient data can also be auto-populated while performing a digital evaluation, such as age, gender or diagnosis. EVAL users will have an easier time accessing important patient health information and experience a reduction in the amount of data inputs and redundant administrative work.

High level data privacy, security and regulatory compliance

We operate in an increasingly interconnected world with larger volumes of data moving around a rapidly evolving information landscape. As a result an increasing number of disparate regulations require entities to be very careful about the collection, storage, and processing of personal data. Paramount is the ability to navigate a complex data economy and exchange data between various entities with different privacy and security requirements, regulations and goals. In the US, data privacy laws have been fragmented by sector and types of data. For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) specifies how healthcare providers must secure sensitive healthcare information against theft and fraud, and sets limits on how organizations can use or disclose protected health information. In addition, the US has traditionally taken a more hands-off approach regarding data privacy and tends to favor entities that collect and use personal data. In contrast, policy in the United Kingdom (UK) is built on a true privacy-first mindset (data protection as a fundamental right) and takes a comprehensive approach to data management. Now the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) arguably sets the standard across all sectors for data privacy worldwide.

From the ground up, EVAL's platform was architected as a privacy-by-design data platform that is designed to meet the highest data privacy standards and is in compliance with both HIPAA and GDPR requirements— keeping with the fundamental rights people now expect around how their data is used, shared or disclosed. Staying on the cutting edge of today’s data privacy laws is essential for maintaining customer trust and avoiding legal and financial consequences.

Powered by AWS

Most healthcare institutions enterprise-wide IT solutions utilize on-premises data centers to provision a variety of basic computing resources, such as processing, storage and security. In contrast, the EVAL platform deploys on a global cloud-based computing infrastructure or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (laaS), called Amazon Web Services (AWS) - an laaS known for its high availability, dependability and verified compliance with computer security best practices, standards and regulations (AWS Compliance). When computer systems and data reside in the cloud, security responsibilities become shared between the cloud service provider (AWS) and the customer (EVAL). AWS secures the underlying global infrastructure that supports the cloud, and EVAL is responsible for anything that is put on the cloud or connects to the cloud.

The AWS global infrastructure is HIPAA and GDPR compliant and able to meet the stringent security requirements of your enterprise organization. Please contact EVAL support to ensure that your GDPR jurisdiction is available.

App development integrity - transparency, traceability, & testing automation

As a citizen developer, trust in the integrity and accuracy of your work is vital to adoption and patient safety. Transparency and traceability is how we learn from each other and build on best practices.

To build trust with EVAL users looking to use an app, anyone with access to the EVAL app is able to “look under the hood” in a read-only mode and validate all of the author's work. However, only an authorized app author can edit an EVAL app.

Additionally, anyone with access to the EVAL app can inspect an app's revision history to learn about changes made by the author(s). EVAL users will be able to trace authorship, revisions and see author’s update notes. If an app revision has been deprecated, users will be notified that the app is no longer available and have the option to upgrade to a newer revision or clone the app for a new creation.