According to a Nov. 7 report in the online publication Venture Beat, the Verona, Wis.-based Epic Systems Corporation plans to offer remote hosting to its electronic health record (EHR) patient care organization customers beginning in 2015, following in the footsteps of the Kansas City-based Cerner Corporation, which has offered remote hosting for nearly 15 years now.
The Nov. 7 article by Mark Sullivan reported that “Epic Systems, the largest provider of electronic health records in the U.S. is building a large data center at its Verona, Wis. Campus, in which it will operate the electronic health records systems and data for many of its medical group and small hospital clients. The decision to offer ‘remote hosting’ services represents a major change in approach for Epic, which has made a business of selling and installing EHR systems that run on the premises of its health provider customers. It brings Epic one big step closer to offering a ‘software as a service’ (Saas) solution, which some of its competitors already offer.”
The article went on to say that “Epic CEO Judy Faulkner has said that the remote hosting service will be offered first to new customers but will be extended to existing customers later, tow industry souces with knowledge of the matter told VentureBeat. Epic responded to VentureBeat questions with an e-mail statement from VP Stirling Martin: ‘New advances in computing power, virtualization, and high-speed connectivity have combined to make possible a hosted option that meets our customers’ high performance standards.’” The article stated that Epic will initially offer the remote hosting option to medical groups and smaller hospitals, which have struggled with the staffing and management of complex clinical information systems. It went on to note that Cerner has offered remote hosting since 1999.
