All Case Studies

Development of a Cloud-Native Platform for an Australian Healthcare Company

Cloud-Based EMR Software
4 min read

The Client

Clinic to Cloud is an Australian IT company whose flagship product is the cloud-based Electronic Medical Records system for the primary and specialist care segments. Today the platform serves over thousands of practices who in turn serve over millions of patients nationally. 

The Challenge 

The clinicians and support staff of the private medical clinical sector in Australia needed to have information available to them in real-time.  Information that helps them provide the most accurate level of care.  Other key drivers included patient engagement during their care journey.  This was a mission and security-critical application for a market segment that is busy and has high demand. The client wanted to partner with an engineering firm that could integrate with its own people and share the vision based on cloud-native services. After a rigorous global search, the client “Clinic to Cloud” chose First Line Software as its engineering partner. The business complexities lied in several areas: compliance with the government and Medicare Australia, several high-value integrations, and workflow designs that needed to suit busy clinicians, their support teams, and the patient. The system was developed with a Cloud-native only approach and mobile-first mindset. 

Solution

Clinicians are often on the move, and their priority is their patients. It was important to design and deliver a product that was device-agnostic and allowed them to have the relevant information to provide care for their patients. We leveraged the Microsoft Azure platform to deliver a scalable and secure cloud-native platform that, in turn, allowed us to deliver information at the point of care to our platform users and patients.

The Clinic to Cloud platform has several integrations, including Medicare Australia, Australia’s universal health care system, the MIMS Medication platform with decision support, the eRx Script Exchange system, Email, SMS, EFTPOS, Stripe, AI-Based Voice to Text by Nuance, and others. 

These integrations comply with government regulations and adhere to industry standards for data privacy and security.

Microsoft Azure was chosen as the hosting platform for Clinic to Cloud, which allowed our engineers to design the solution in a scalable and secure way. We leverage a number of services within Azure, such as Database as a Service, scalable virtual machines, API Gateways, and much more, while keeping costs under control as the business scales up.

cloud-based-emr-software

Designed for busy specialized medical practices and clinicians, the Clinic to Cloud platform can be used by a medical practice of any size and at any location. 

The application is accessible from any desktop or laptop running a Windows or Mac operating system as long as it is connected to the Internet and has access to a browser. 

Mobility was a key aspect of the platform. Whether you use an Apple or Android mobile device, the First Line Software team built highly functional and secure cloud-native Clinic to Cloud mobile apps.

The Practice Administration module provides functionality for configuring practice details, scheduling, messaging, prescribing medication controls integrations, and access rights for users. It also allows doctors to manage their settings and set preferences and favorites for their letter writing, voice-to-text controls, and investigations, both pathology and imaging. 

The receptionist teams can manage appointments, schedules, and patient demographics, intake patient appointments, invoices, and claims from Medicare and Private insurers, send or schedule SMS and/or Email reminders, letters, and much more. 

Doctors and clinical staff can run clinical consults, prescribe medication with decision support, request investigations for pathology and imaging via integrated request forms, review income results and referrals, write letters with the built-in voice recognition system, manage patient clinical history, diagnose with ICD10 codes, and much more.

Patients can also use Clinic to Cloud. They have a separate Patient Portal with personal clinical data, history, the ability to book an appointment, and the ability to pay for past visits.

Key technical features 

  • Application hosting using MS Azure
  • MS Azure (Web Apps, SQL Database, Blob storage, failover support via Traffic Manager and SQL Geo-Replication, VMs for custom services and 3rd party applications)
  • Integration with Medicare Australia for billing and Claiming (universal healthcare system in Australia) via Claiming.com  
  • Integration with the MIMS Medication database with Medication Interactions and decision support built in. 
  • Integration with eRx Script Exchange system to make electronic medication prescriptions
  • Stripe integration will provide patients with the ability to pay online on a patient portal/special payment page. Also, it allows patient credit cards to be used by practice in the main application 
  • Interoperability via an Integration with Secure Messaging systems. 
  • The system adheres to industry standards and regulations for data privacy and security, ensuring that patient information is protected.
    • Passed multiple Pentests by security firms 
  • Middleware for sharing HL7 format files
  • Middleware for One-touch on-demand printing and scanning via a browser 
  • Integrated with Xero financials 
  • Separate portal for patients to view clinical information, provide personal details, pay for past visits  and search for appointments in practices
  • iOS and Android mobile apps that replicate the functionality available in the web version for the Clinician.
  • AI based speech recognition functionality via Nuance 
  • Migration from other EMR systems to Clinic to Cloud functionality (ETL-based process of hosting new Users\Clinics\Practices from other EMR systems on the AUS market)

The Technological Stack 

Microsoft SQL Server; Windows Azure; C#; ASP.NET; Speech recognition

Learn more

Start a conversation today