Hyland Software's Document Management Blog

Live at OTTC 2012: CEO A.J. Hyland Shares His Thoughts on Maximizing Your IT Investment

// September 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, Mobile, OTTC // Tom Tennant

One conversation that continues to pop up on the show floor at the 2012 OnBase Training & Technology Conference (OTTC) is how companies can maximize their technology investment. And not just their investment in enterprise content management (ECM), but their entire technology investment.

Earlier today, we had the chance to chat with Hyland Software President and CEO A.J. Hyland on the topic. Hyland shared his thoughts, as well as the importance of choosing the right product – and the right partner – to help enhance your tech investment and solve business issues.

“A lot of people invest in a technology that they think is going to get them 100 percent of the way there and realize that it gets them only 70 percent of the way there,” Hyland says. “What they need to do is look across their business applications and determine where those gaps are and if there is something that can make those systems work better together.”

In terms of finding that product, Hyland says it’s important to search for a solution that fits within your IT infrastructure and meets the standards that you’ve set for your company.

“It’s also important to look for a vendor or product that has open standards,” he says. “The more closed they are the more difficult it’s going to be to extend your solutions.”

When searching for a partner to help realize those business goals, partnership is where it’s at, says Hyland.

“Are you at a comfort level with the organization that you feel you’re going to be there with you shoulder-to-shoulder?” he says. “As things change in your organization, is this someone who’s going to grow and innovate with you?”

Hyland also says to reach out to a potential vendor’s customers to learn as much as you can about the company.

“Make sure they feel the same sense of partnership you’re looking for,” says Hyland.

OTTC 2012 Live: Three Choices to Consider when Investing in ECM

// September 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, Mobile, OTTC // Kevin Flanagan

Choice is a crucial concept when considering an enterprise content management (ECM) solution. In order to make the most of your technology investment, you want an ECM solution that provides you with both a roadmap toward future growth – but a roadmap that delivers choices, or options, along the way. You need your solution to flexible and fluid, so that you can create solutions tailored to both your business challenges and opportunities.

Three choices you want to make – or three options you want to have – include deployment, user experience and solution growth.

• Deployment Choice: Depending on your business goals or technology budget or IT bandwidth, you want to have deployment choices so that you can make the most out of your ECM investment. You also want the flexibility to change the way you deploy your solution as your needs change over time. So ask any potential vendor if they will let you choose to deploy their ECM solution on-premises, in the cloud or through a hybrid of the two. Make sure you have the ability to easily migrate between deployment types based on what best aligns with your organization today and in the future. Make sure you have choices to fit your needs.
• User Experience Choice: Your employees fill many different roles, with varying responsibilities across a range of locations, devices and operating systems. And as smart devices – phones, tablets – become more prominent in people’s lives, your employees will look for the same choices they have in their personal life in their work life. So a smart ECM solution must allow your users to choose the way they work with their documents and information.  Whether it’s seamless integration with the business applications they use every day, allowing your employees to access the information they need while staying in those applications, or making that information instantly accessible and actionable on their tablet, you want to provide them with a robust, powerful user experience that best facilitates their role.
• Solution Growth Choice: Your business is dynamic, your needs will change and your processes will evolve. If you do not have options to grow your ECM solution, then it will never truly be a solution. So make sure your vendor offers a flexible and easy-to-use ECM solution, one that’s tailored for departments but comprehensive for the enterprise, designed to give you what you need today and grow with you over time. For Hyland Software, that means eliminating custom coding and providing users with configurable solutions by department and for the enterprise. By using simple checkboxes, menus and radio buttons, OnBase allows users to quickly create and expand solutions. In this way, your choices to build, maintain and grow your ECM solution are limitless.

These are just three simple – but critical – choices you must make as you discover your ECM options. But remember, even before you make these decisions, you want to make sure you have the choice to begin with.

Live @ HIMSS AsiaPac: Treating the patient holistically

// September 19th, 2012 // Comments Off // Healthcare // Colleen Sirhal

One key part of the conversations at HIMSS AsiaPac this year was how healthcare organization can move towards treating the whole patient. Creating and accessing a complete view of the patient, no matter who is providing care, continues to be a significant challenge for the healthcare industry globally.

Primary care and specialty physicians struggle to communicate and stay up-to-date with what is going on with a single patient. They often don’t have access to the same medical record and often see out-of-date information. It’s difficult for them to know how the others are treating their patient and to coordinate their care appropriately. This lack of information is frustrating for patients and clinicians alike.

This is especially true for patients with complicated medical histories and problems, such as the elderly or those with chronic diseases.

“It’s a story of connecting patient information, of managing and giving relevant information at the time it’s needed,” says Tim van der Werf, chief strategist of Technology Consulting for HP Asia Pacific and Japan, in the closing panel discussion.

This information, however, isn’t shared as simply as it might seem. “The data from the EMR is only the beginning to sharing information,” says Mark Dente, MD, chief medical officer at GE Healthcare, in the same closing panel discussion. “What about an ultrasound? What about a PET scan?”

And that’s just to name a few. What about the information that still exists on paper? Or in photos or videos?

The fact is that at least 25 percent of the patient record is held outside of the EMR. To really connect information across a patient’s continuum of care, healthcare organizations must also look at how to share all of a patient’s record – both EMR data and outside content. To do that, healthcare organizations are looking to other technology besides the EMR, such as enterprise content management (ECM). ECM captures patient content that exists outside of an EMR, manages it in a central repository and makes it securely available through the EMR where and when it is needed.

With the EMR and ECM working together, healthcare organizations can then begin to look at how to share the patient’s complete information across facilities in their own health system as well as those outside of it so the patient and all of his/her caregivers have a holistic view of care.

Live at OTTC 2012: Choose the Right ECM Community and You’ll Soar

// September 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, OTTC // Tom Tennant

When the poet Alfred Tennyson wrote “I am a part of all that I have met” in his epic poem, Ulysses, he was talking about how the power of Ulysses’ greater community shaped both who he was as a person and the successes he had achieved thus far in life.

It might seem like a stretch to suggest Tennyson’s words can extend to an enterprise content management (ECM) solution. But it’s entirely true when you talk about the power of a community of technology professionals.

Having access to a network of people, especially from the same industry, who use the same ECM product to discuss best practices and share ideas on how to grow their solution so that it continues to be an invaluable resource.

And access to that community of users shouldn’t mean going to a forum on some website where you can post a question and hope to get a response. A good ECM vendor should enable customers with the opportunity to engage in multiple ways, both in person and online, through users groups, online forums and events.

Janet Jenkins, senior business analyst with Cobb County, Ga., knows a bit about that. Jenkins sat down with us today during a break at Hyland’s OnBase Training and Technology Conference (OTTC).

Jenkins was asked if she’d like to take on the role of OnBase administrator. Coming from a less technical role, it was a challenge Jenkins was excited to take on. And one she succeeded at because of her ability to connect with other OnBase users on Community, Hyland Software’s online customer destination.

Hyland’s Community provides expert content from dedicated Hyland contributors. It also provides detailed information about our OnBase solutions including reference guides that provide in-depth details about our solutions, changes from release to release as well as solution-specific forums where users can ask questions and share best practices.

Jenkins and her team were one of the first to join Community and, even today, continue to visit the site several times a day.

“There are 10 to 15 different ways you can solve a problem with OnBase,” she says. “Access to Community allows me to see what everyone else is doing, and let’s me share how I’m solving problems, too. You don’t feel as isolated, and you welcome the sharing of information.”

Engaged vendors will empower customers with several ways to connect to fellow users, reducing their reliance on the vendor to create solutions. At Hyland, we have resources at the ready to help troubleshoot and grow our customers’ solutions. But we understand that engaging with peers is also a valuable tool, and we work in collaboration with our customers every day to create a thriving OnBase community.

“There are a lot of really smart people in this world and not all of them are my direct co-workers,” says Kim Dale, senior project manager at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. We caught up with Dale via social media at OTTC. “Connecting with as many of those people can help me learn best practices, tips and potential pitfalls in my technology solutions and to share my own knowledge.”

Dale represents another way technology professionals can network to collectively solve problems and share ideas: social media. A smart vendor will use social media, like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, to connect users with other users.

“I follow Hyland Software on Twitter and am meeting other OnBase users on Twitter as a part of OTTC,” says Dale. “I look forward to being able to reach out to these contacts as I continue to expand my OnBase implementation. I also like Twitter as a way of getting to know people and as an efficient way to solicit answers to specific questions.”

Being a part of a vibrant technology community means you never have to be on your own to figure out how best to utilize your solution or search for support. You have access to information and people when you need them.

And we all need a helpful community to turn to.

Live at OTTC 2012: Choosing the Right ECM Partner Makes All the Difference

// September 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // Back Office, Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise content management, Financial Services, Food and Beverage, Government, Healthcare, Higher Education, Insurance, IT, OTTC // Kevin Flanagan

Hardly a day goes by where we are not faced with some sort of choice. There are the simple choices: choosing a dinner menu or whether to hit the snooze button for a third time. Then there are the complex ones. Choices that require critical thought and careful exploration before a decision is made. After all, our choices offer varying degrees of significance and consequence.

Selecting an enterprise content management (ECM) solution is one of those more complex choices. You have to feel confident that the product will provide solutions that address the unique needs of your business. A product that will not only solve today’s problems, but address the future needs of your business as well.

But there’s another choice to make. One that might even overshadow choosing an ECM system. And that is choosing and ECM partner.

You want a partner that goes above and beyond to make sure you not only have the best possible ECM solution, but the best possible experience. From the company’s approach to support to the development of its product to its training methodology, you want a partner that’s going to work hard to give you the solution you want when you want it, and the solution you need when you need it. That’s something we call “customer delight.”

After all, you want to know your ECM vendor considers itself to be your ultimate resource. You need clear and copious lines of communication. And you want that vendor to collaborate with you to enhance the solution you’ve dedicated to help run your business.

More than that, you want a partner who will help you connect with other users of that ECM solution so that you can network, share ideas and discover solutions that your peers have encountered and conquered.  For example, Community, our online destination for Hyland customers, not only provides detailed information about OnBase solutions, it’s also a place where users can discuss needs on solution-specific forums that are monitored by Hyland experts.

Then there’s the OnBase Training and Technical Conference (OTTC).

While OTTC provides you with every opportunity to enhance your OnBase knowledge – whether that’s  learning about a new module, becoming a certified administrator, or uncovering new solutions in your particular industry – it’s real power is the way it strengthens relationships. Thousands of OnBase professionals gather at these events to share experiences and learn together in classes and training sessions.

Without a strong technology partner, you’re ECM solution is in danger of becoming, at best, underused and, at worst, stagnant and expensive. A true partner will, day in and day out, demonstrate ways your solution can adapt to your ever-changing needs and provide you with a community of users ready to make their success your success.

So get ready. It’s your choice to make.

Live from HIMSS AsiaPac: How healthcare systems are transforming from one side of the world to the other

// September 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // Healthcare // Colleen Sirhal

In this morning’s opening session at HIMSS AsiaPac12, it was clear that healthcare systems from one side of the world to the other are facing strikingly similar challenges. The opening session featured Gan Kim Yong, Minister of Health in Singapore, and Dr. Blackford Middleton, Corporate Director of Clinical Informatics Research & Development (CIRD) at Partners Healthcare System in Boston, Mass.

Although they are from countries on opposite sides of the world and 12 time zones apart, both focused on how the changing healthcare landscape is going to force healthcare systems to undergo a remarkable transition. With aging populations, the rise of chronic diseases and an exploding amount of information to handle, current systems and processes aren’t sustainable.

Gan focused on how Singapore is reevaluating how they deliver care and moving from episodic treatment to holistic and integrated patient care that connects care both within and outside of healthcare organizations.

“Healthcare information must be current and complete to provide good care,” said Gan, “and it should be available no matter where they are treated. IT will play a key role in this transformation of healthcare services.”

Middleton noted that the amount of information out there is becoming unmanageable for clinicians as well. It continues to increase exponentially and goes beyond the human capacity for decision-making. Clinical decision support (CDS) systems have to continue to progress if we are going to provide better patient care and bring down the cost of healthcare.

Whether it’s in Singapore, Europe, the Middle East or the U.S., the cry for a complete patient record and knowledge is heard around the world. In every hospital we visit, they are working to accomplish a level of care that goes beyond the capabilities of today’s processes and solutions. And moving to integrated, holistic patient care can’t be done without the support and innovation of healthcare IT.

To talk with us more about the call for healthcare transformation, visit Hyland Software at booth 512 at HIMSS AsiaPac. Even better, let’s talk over a free beer during our happy hour starting at 4 p.m. today in the booth.

Hyland@HIMSS AsiaPac: Bridging patient care and hospital administration

// September 16th, 2012 // No Comments » // Healthcare // Colleen Sirhal

As CIOs and IT managers in the Asia Pacific gear up for HIMSS AsiaPac12, evolving standards and regulations, improving patient care and rising costs are all top of mind. To help their organizations handle these changes, they are turning to software solutions to provide the tools and strategies.

In fact, fueled by these investments, global healthcare IT budgets are increasing by 7 percent in 2012 and they will continue to grow by more than 5 percent per year through 2016, according to Gartner Research.

As healthcare organizations expand existing investments and bring on new ones, many applications are designed specifically for clinical and patient care or specifically for hospital administrative tasks. However, there many times these two areas need to share information. Bridging that gap, then, becomes difficult when clinical and administrative solutions are separate.

Implementing solutions that unite these two areas is key to creating an IT strategy that meets the challenges of today and in the future.

At HIMSS AsiaPac, they’re continuing the theme of “Linking People, Potential and Progress” that kicked off with the HIMSS conference in the U.S.  It’s a tough, but important goal for healthcare organizations across the world. Achieving it begins by making sure people, potential and progress are linked within your own healthcare organizations in both patient care and administrative areas.

To learn how enterprise content management is one of the solutions that spans across the healthcare organization, stop by booth #512 during your visit to HIMSS AsiaPac and keep an eye out for more blogs as we comment live from HIMSS AsiaPac throughout the week.

Maturing your Content Management Strategy to Support your EMR

// September 10th, 2012 // No Comments » // Document Management, Enterprise content management, Healthcare, IT, Workflow // Dan West

While we see many healthcare organizations using document management/imaging (DMI) systems, a cohesive, enterprise approach is still elusive. Many healthcare organizations have started with the document management component of their electronic medical record (EMR) or other niche systems. Because these are often limited to simple storage and retrieval, organizations often wind up using multiple niche systems in various departments. These systems don’t usually share information well with each other, if at all, nor with other key health information technology (HIT) applications, creating silos of information.

These silos make it impossible to take a comprehensive approach to content across the organization, making them unable to support a more comprehensive EMR – crucial to patient care initiatives. Healthcare organizations need to mature their document management solutions so that they have all patient information available when and where it is needed from within the EMR itself.

To do that, they need to move from document management to enterprise content management (ECM). While these two terms are often used interchangeably, they are actually very different approaches:

Document Management/Imaging:  DMI focuses on document storage and retrieval. Many systems are limited to converting paper documents to electronic files through scanning. Because their viewers can only handle a few files types, they often can’t manage a wide range of content. In addition, accessing documents can be cumbersome and is usually not integrated with core HIT applications, like the EMR. Without robust, permission-based access, sometimes document viewing cannot be restricted appropriately, opening up the system to security issues.

DMI systems often have limited scalability in both the numbers and types of users and documents they can maintain with optimal performance. They lack sophisticated automated workflow features and are sometimes difficult to integrate with other IT systems. Because of these limitations, healthcare organizations often use multiple systems to meet the different needs of different departments, creating silos of information and hindering interoperability across the organization.

Enterprise Content Management: ECM provides a single solution for departments and processes across a healthcare organization. True ECM handles nearly any type of unstructured content (translation: any information not already handled as data in another system), including paper, emails, graphics, videos, photos, forms, clinical images, electronic feeds, data from other siloed storage.  

It also has robust security settings that keep sensitive content, from patient information to employee files, protected from unauthorized access. Beyond better storage, it also has easier retrieval – allowing users to access content as if it came with their key applications like EMRs or ERPs.  In addition, ECM brings automated workflows, having tasks completed automatically, to the healthcare enterprise, integrating content into your clinical and business processes. 

Content is at the foundation of many healthcare initiatives – from providing a complete electronic  medical record to recognizing payments sooner in the revenue cycle to creating more efficient business processes in administrative departments. By moving from a document management system to an enterprise content management strategy, healthcare organizations create powerful, dynamic solutions that will support strategic initiatives (meeting Meaningful Use standards, joining accountable care organizations (ACOs), supporting health information exchanges (HIEs), etc.) today and tomorrow.