New Jersey hospital builds EHR, with plans to commercialize

A health system in New Jersey is rolling out a custom-built electronic health records system it designed in-house—and has ambitions to sell the product to other community hospitals in the coming years.

Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck is among a growing number of hospitals and health systems investing in digital product development with an eye toward commercialization.

The not-for-profit, independent Catholic health system began implementing the EHR in its emergency department last May after more than two years of development. The health system eventually intends to deploy in its 361-bed hospital, its physician network and other sites.

And the health system is looking beyond its walls and seeing a revenue opportunity. Holy Name plans to commercialize its EHR, dubbed Harmony, and market it to other community hospitals and health systems.

Holy Name doesn’t yet know when the EHR will be available to purchase, but it likely will be within a few years, said Jessica Cox, the director of product solutions.

“We are actively moving toward that,” Cox said. “We know that Holy Name is not the only community hospital that is facing the challenge that we are.”

Holy Name’s primary goal was to build a tool that collects information across care settings so patients have access to a single record of their medical histories, Cox said.

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The system’s existing EHRs were “disjointed,” Cox said. Holy Name has been using an in-house EHR for its inpatient units for about 20 years, along with a product from an outside vendor in its emergency department, she said.

“We needed an enterprise solution,” Cox said. “Most EHRs in the marketplace today that are catered toward hospital and health system enterprises aren’t truly integrated.”

Cox joined Holy Name in 2018 as part of its effort to recruit a technology team with software development experience to build the EHR. Cox could not provide an estimate for how much the EHR cost to create.

The product development process for the emergency department rollout included close collaboration with Holy Name’s clinical, patient access, as well as coding and billing staff, who provided feedback to the software team.

Holy Name also is creating a patient portal for its more than 70 physician practices as it prepares to expand the custom EHR across its entire network over the next few years.

Although the New Jersey health system isn’t the first to make an in-house EHR system, it remains uncommon these days, said Adam Seyb, a partner in West Monroe’s healthcare and life sciences practice. In the 1990s and early 2000s, health systems were more likely to set up bespoke EHRs, but commercial vendors such as Epic Systems and Cerner now dominate the market.

Building an EHR system is an “ambitious” and resource-intensive project, Seyb said. Software development takes time and money, and the programs must continually be updated to incorporate new technologies and keep up with shifting regulations, he said.

Despite the advantages of customization for clinicians and patients, hospitals that branch out into EHR software development arguably are stepping away from their core competencies, Seyb said. Nevertheless, more healthcare companies are creating or investing in digital tools that work in conjunction with their EHRs, he said.

Larger health systems such as Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic, Renton, Washington-based Providence and Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System are among those that have launched companies to market digital health and health technology tools.

Selling products can offset development costs, said Venkat Inumella, a partner in McKinsey’s healthcare practice who co-leads the technology and digital service lines for North American healthcare providers.

Most hospitals and health systems are purchasers, not developers, of digital products and don’t have the people or the resources needed to build digital health tools and launch related businesses. That’s been changing in recent years, Inumella said. Hospitals, unlike software companies, inherently benefit from a deep understanding of complex healthcare operations, he said.

“We need more hospital systems getting more comfortable developing software,” Inumella said. “There are lots of things that we haven’t solved.”