Managing an EHR Vendor Company
Being an executive managing an EHR vendor company, one is faced with the challenge of dealing with new federal interoperability rules of the game while at the same time aiming at following ideal SDLC standards. Here is how I would advise the development team:
Throughout the Planning phase, the primary objective is to gain as much information as possible about the new federal regulations. This means there is a need to involve legal, compliance, and other key stakeholders, such as healthcare providers, earlier to understand how the requirements can be implemented (Alzayed & Khalfan, 2022). This approach in determining timelines is critical, with emphasis on realistic timelines given the complexity of the interoperability updates.
While proposing a course of action for the Analysis phase, there is a dire need to establish a proper gap analysis of the existing system. It is essential to determine areas where the existing system needs to effectively address new standards such as FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) (Vorisek et.al., 2022). Securing change approval and support requires the participation of cross-functional teams in order to explain the technical, security, and functional changes involved.
In the design phase, the team should ensure that the new interoperability features are incorporated into the design of this new system and that the design is secure, scalable, and modular. This phase should also consider whether the system is easy for users to use and can be updated with regulation changes.
In the Implementation phase, one has to stick to the agile methodologies where constant feedback and development are done in cycles (Alsari et.al., 2020). Code reviews, along with unit and integration tests, should be done as often as possible to keep the system on track and within compliance. The continuous interaction with other teams will reduce the time and effort needed to realize the project, hence maintaining it within the regulations and technical specifications.
Last is the evaluation phase, where the work is centered on extensive testing emphasizing the system’s interoperability with other healthcare systems. Interoperability requirements will be met through a series of real-life simulations to ascertain that the system can meet them. Further, constant monitoring and reaction to problems with patches or updates will keep the system appropriate and efficient.
In conclusion, one can have a general understanding that in the case of creating EHR systems, compliance with the set of regulations and adaption of the practices suggested by the SDLC are equally important, and the balance between those should be achieved with the help of flexibility, cooperation, and testing.
References
Alsari, A., Qureshi, R., & Algarni, A. (2020, October). Agile framework to transform traditional team. In 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) (pp. 1-9). IEEE.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9274240/.
Alzayed, A., & Khalfan, A. (2022). Understanding Top Management Involvement in SDLC Phases. J. Softw., 17(3), 87-120.
https://www.jsoftware.us/vol17/462-JSW15500.pdf.
Vorisek, C. N., Lehne, M., Klopfenstein, S. A. I., Mayer, P. J., Bartschke, A., Haese, T., & Thun, S. (2022). Fast healthcare interoperability resources (FHIR) for interoperability in health research: systematic review. JMIR medical informatics, 10(7), e35724.