From EHR vendors touting big plans to create national patient databases, to their plans to move forward with interoperability efforts, here is what hospital and health system CIOs can expect from electronic health records vendors in 2023:
Epic Systems, the Verona, Wis.-based EHR giant, continues to snag partnerships with some of the largest U.S. healthcare systems.
Several health system CIOs and other IT leaders told Becker's the reason large systems are moving over to this EHR vendor could have a lot to do with consolidation.
As health systems look to provide more seamless experiences for patients and clinicians, Epic has been a vendor that helps consolidate multiple disparate systems into one environment.
Research confirms this trend.
According to KLAS Research, bigger systems have been increasingly choosing Epic in recent years, while Oracle Cerner has been steadily gaining smaller facilities.
As for Oracle Cerner, the nation's second-largest hospital EHR vendor, there have been a lot of changes to the company in 2022, especially since Oracle completed its $28.4 billion acquisition of Cerner in June.
The EHR company generated $1.5 billion in revenue for Oracle in the second quarter of 2022 and is playing a strong role in Oracle's overall quarterly sales, which exceeded analysts' estimates.
The company has also touted big plans for the future. According to Larry Ellison, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Oracle, the EHR company's new affiliation with Oracle is allowing it to move further in technological advances.
One of Mr. Ellison's future plans for Cerner is to create a national — and global — patient database.
Interoperability
In June, Epic revealed plans to join the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, a new health information exchange framework, as an inaugural qualified health information network. The company has also collaborated with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the Sequoia Project and others to build the principles and procedures of TEFCA.
Oracle Cerner is also working on interoperability.
The EHR vendor is a founding member of the CommonWell Health Alliance, which aims to advance interoperability by connecting systems nationwide and making health data widely available.
Most recently, the CommonWell Health Alliance announced that it would apply to become one of the first qualified health information networks as part of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement.
TEFCA is part of the 21st Century Cures Act passed in 2016 that aims to establish a nationwide EHR exchange.