MCIS, the IT arm of Marshfield Clinic, the largest private group medical practice in Wisconsin, has major plans for HIMSS15.

A homegrown ambulatory EHR system that MCIS developed over the past 30 years is now ready to move into its next generation with a public launch at the April conference in Chicago.

The new cloud-based MCIS Clinicals product line includes population health and patient engagement components as well as advanced clinical documentation and charge capture.

"We're focused on bringing enterprise features at a reasonable cost to other healthcare organizations around the country," says Peter Shave, the chief architect for MCIS, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Marshfield Clinic last year.

The work sprang out of ongoing requirements at Marshfield Clinic, from the perspective of being able to provide "high-quality, cost-effective, patient-engaging healthcare products to their patient population," Shave explains.

The target market for the product line is small to large physician practices; it is not intended for use at hospitals or integrated delivery networks.

Marshfield Clinic employs more than 700 physicians representing over 80 different medical specialties.

"We have a strong history of analytics in the organization," Shave adds. "We pride ourselves on incorporating analytics directly into the product and making it available at point of care."

The MCIS EHR became the legal record of Marshfield Clinic in 1994. Nine years later, Marshfield made it tablet-friendly and, thus, available at the point of care. In 2006, the system earned the distinction of being the first provider-developed ambulatory EHR in the country to achieve CCHIT certification.

Other milestones included growing to be the largest patient database in Wisconsin in 2008. The next year, Marshfield implemented e-prescribing into the system. It followed that by earning Meaningful use Stage 1 certification in 2011, and then Stage 2 certification in 2014.

In addition to their product launch, Marshfield representatives will also be presenting two education sessions at HIMSS15: "Applying Analytics to Population Health Management" and "Engaging Patients Online in Rural Wisconsin: A 10-year Journey."