A new cloud-based electronic health record is expected to make its debut in the EHR market this fall. Developed by Miami-based CareCloud, the EHR is in beta, according to the company’s executive vice president Richard Lopez del Rincon, who anticipates taking clients live Oct. 1.

A new cloud-based electronic health record is expected to make its debut in the EHR market this fall. Developed by Miami-based CareCloud, the EHR is in beta, according to the company’s executive vice president Richard Lopez del Rincon, who anticipates taking clients live Oct. 1.

The EHR is designed to be scalable, serving the solo physician to very large practices, says Lopez del Rincon. In identifying EHR competitors he named Practice Fusion, AdvanceMD and athenahealth. But Lopez del Rincon says CareCloud's EHR is unique not only because it is cloud-based, but because it is computer and browser agnostic. That, and its “tremendous focus on user experience,” he adds.

Safe in the clouds

When it comes to  security, “There is no safer place then the clouds for these practices,” Lopez del Rincon says.

“We have our data in the same place that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services  is moving its data –  Terremark,” he says.  Terremark, a provider of managed and cloud services, was bought by Verizon for $1.4 billion in early 2011, he notes. 

The data is owned by the practice, Lopez del Rincon explains. “Per HIPAA, we sign a business associate agreement that allows us to see personal health information, but it is their data. If they were to terminate we would provide all the data at no charge to them.”

In the event that the practice experienced a data breach an audit trail is easily accessible, Lopez del Rincon adds. That said, he believes that “sabotage is very difficult in the cloud. They would have to be a tremendous hacker.”

Meaningful use ready

As for the burning question of whether this will be certified EHR technology, Lopez del Rincon confirms it will be “absolutely certified by the end of the year,” enabling providers who use the technology to apply for federal incentives.

Cost effective

Lopez Del Rincon calls the company’s pricing strategy “unique.”

“Needless to say it’s going to leave some jaws dropping across the industry,” when CareCloud formally launches the EHR, he says.

Other cost savings stem from the fact that because it is cloud-based technology, he notes, so there is no hardware installation or software licenses, resulting in implementation at a fraction of the cost of a client-server system, which can cost $40,000 or more to get set up.

IT resource requirements are also significantly reduced, Lopez del Rincon says, because updating hardware and software is done internally in the cloud by the software-as-a-service provider.