New York-based health IT company Altera Digital Health says its Microsoft Azure-built Paragon Denali electronic health record is now generally available for health systems.

WHY IT MATTERS
The new electronic health record, available as software-as-a-service, brings cloud services to rural, critical access and community hospitals, according to an announcement from the company last week.

A cloud-based EHR provides greater system reliability and data accessibility that can support an organization's growth and users' experiences with reduced hardware and maintenance costs and advanced security controls.

Meghan Bisping, chief information officer of El Segundo, California-based Pipeline Health System, said with Paragon, the company provided time and support in helping the health system "meet the rising demands of healthcare."

"Paragon has been an essential investment for our healthcare system, driving EHR best practices across our hospitals," she said in a statement provided by the company.

Mark Bruno, executive vice president for Paragon at Altera, noted that the new EHR is aimed at helping community hospitals, which generally have fewer resources than larger health systems.

"But they must navigate many of the same regulatory requirements, financial pressures and IT complexities," he said.

THE LARGER TREND
Cloud-based EHRs, robotic process automation and technologies are offering a lifeline to rural and community hospitals.

"People often forget that rural and community hospitals do many of the same things as large health systems, from the revenue cycle to regulatory reporting," Dr. Mark Pratt, chief medical officer at Altera, whose Paragon products trace their roots to the former Allscripts, told Healthcare IT News in June.

"These are still highly complex organizations that share many of the same challenges as big hospitals but with fewer resources," he said.

The Paragon system is not the only updated EHR introduced in recent days. This past week, Oracle previewed its own new AI-enabled electronic health record, built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and offering secure automation across clinical workflows, enabling faster insights at the point of care with streamlined documentation.

ON THE RECORD
"The cloud represents a new era for healthcare, enabling organizations to respond to evolving clinical and operational pressures while empowering providers with robust data and AI-driven capabilities," said Todd Mersch, general manager of health and life sciences at Microsoft, in a statement.

Bruno added that Paragon Denali was designed to "fulfill the unique needs" of rural, critical access and community hospitals and "enable them to steadily evolve with the entire industry."

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.