[Guest post by clinicea – cloud software for clinic management]

Rather than EMR + PMS, growing Clinic Chains needed a platform, that had a much wider surface area – that can execute complex scheduling for not just Physicians, but also Therapists, Consult Rooms, and Portable Equipment. Systems were needed that had highly specialised EMRs which understood your Clinic was not the same as the rest of the others in the market. Its individuality in treatment and care is what had set it apart and which needed to be accommodated and handled by the software you decide to adopt. A system was needed that was no longer an island but a platform that can manage in-house pharmacies, handle sample collection for lab tests, incoming and outgoing phone calls, support your branding activities by capturing leads from website inquiries or weekend camps, could identify the potential segment to whom you can cross-sell and repeat sell. The need of the hour was a medical ERP for Primary Healthcare.

Do not confuse this to be the younger brother of the HIS/HMS (Hospital Information/Management System). Just because you need more leg room in your car with ABS and 6 airbags for safety, along with rear air vents for passenger comfort, does not mean you need to buy a truck or a modified version of it. Similarly, the answer to this problem was not buying a cut-down version of the HMS.

But many vendors went for this shortcut. HIS systems built in India for export markets in middle-east and Africa were prime cut-down products that hit the street to fill this niche of a software platform for Clinic Chains.

However do remember – garbage in, garbage out. If the system you take up, is so complicated and difficult to use that you do not end up using it, your implementation of the system will fail, and so will all initiatives you had planned based on the hope that you are digitising your clinic.

So such systems too failed, leaving in their wake Clinic Owners who become severely allergic to the word “Clinic Management System”. Cannot fault them completely, but then again, look around you. When was the last time you saw any Physician in a Hospital using an EMR to record his IPD rounds?

This demand for a comprehensive platform that would scale, and help you grow, that would be end-to-end, i.e. EMR + PMS + Leads Management + Call Management + Pharmacy + Lab + Radiology + Analytics + Mobile Apps + Patient Portal + even a Clinic Website, is what led to the birth of ERP for Clinic Chains, ‘Clinicea.’

Result? With $0 marketing spend, clinics from across the globe, developing and developed markets, signed up to the Clinicea platform, and continue to do so even today. Why? For Clinicea was one, super-targeted platform built for Clinic Chains by a team that exclusively for 14 years had done nothing else but build Clinic Management systems across the globe- however that is a story for another day.

 

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