How Danish Leaders Are Choosing Their EMR

This is something you don’t see every day. Courtesy of my always-on-top-of-things colleague John, here’s a look at the process by which Danish government authorities are selecting an EMR for the Capital Region of Denmark.

As the TBKConsult blog notes, this is a big decision. The authorities expect to spend 135 million euros on the EMR, which will have 40,000 IT users and need to support up to 12,000 clinical and administrative users at 17 hospitals and 54 other healthcare institutions simultaneously. Once installed, the system will support a region serving 2.5 million patients.

Once chosen, the EMR will be implemented with a pilot in the Capital region and eventually, by the end of 2016, rolled out throughout Eastern Denmark.

The selection process has already narrowed down the list of possibilities to five prequalified vendors: Systematic, Epic, Cerner, Cambio and Siemens.  None of the vendors have submitted official proposals yet.

What’s interesting about this isn’t the shortlist, but the means by which the authorities have decided to narrow the list down. Here’s their list of fourteen criteria by which TBKConsult expects them to do so:

  • Installed base and references
  • Clinical reputation
  • HIMSS/EMRAM level 6/7 certifications (Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model)
  • Fit for purpose – clinical processes
  • Fit for purpose – PAS
  • Fit for purpose – external integration
  • Software scalability – current installed base
  • Software scalability (SIG test)
  • Software maintainability (SIG test)
  • Price/Performance
  • Implementation capability
  • Product strategy and influence
  • Political preference
  • Staff perks and community participation

TBK Consult has also ranked the importance of each of these criteria, assigning the most weight to “Fit for purpose-clinical processes” (25 percent), “Fit for purpose-PAS” (15 percent) and “Fit for purpose-external integration” (15 percent). They rated “Implementation capability” at 10 percent and most of the rest of the criteria at 5 percent.

By their weights and ranking, vendor Cambio comes in first, Systematic second, Epic third, Cerner fourth and Siemens fifth. Intriguing. I wonder how close TBK will be when the actual results are announced?

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

1 Comment

  • This is symptomatic of extensive deliberations within the NHS (UK) in selecting information systems – which spectacularly failed despite billions of pounds invested in the past. We need young, eager startups to bring a breath of fresh air to EMR scene. ClinicYou (www.clinicyou.com) is a SaaS EMR based in the UK, but available to the rest of the world, that allows easy adoption of paperless clinical workflows for individual clinicians and clinics. Services like this will ultimately transform how medical fraternity adopts technology solutions – a kind of bottom up, not top down approach.

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories