Patient Registry Software Market

A patient registry is a database which is created for the purpose of collecting secondary data related to patients afflicted with a specific diagnosis or condition, are undergoing a specific treatment or new procedure, using a new medical device, or taking a new medication. Prior to this, a patient registry in its simple form was a collection of paper cards kept inside "a shoebox" by individual physicians.

Patient registry software can include features to make it easy for the physician to provide preventive healthcare to patients through enhanced features that help manage patients, including alerts and notifications about tests or procedures that need to be conducted for each patient, tracking the progress of each patient for better management of patients with chronic diseases.

Additionally, patient registries can provide an invaluable source of research data about specific diseases which can be used to identify risk factors and causal associations between socio-demographic factors, exposure, and patient outcomes.

With respect to the point of care, healthcare information technology (IT) encompasses EHR/EMR. EHR/EMR improves the quality and coordination of medical services. The terms EHR and EMR can be interchangeably used. The difference lies in their format availability, where EMR is a short report, with basic information available and the EHR is a more detailed report. According to the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology, EMR is the digital version of paper charts in a clinician’s office. It typically contains the medical and treatment history of patients. On the other hand, EHRs are designed to reach out beyond the health organizations that originally collect and compile information. EHRs have the capacity to share information between healthcare providers, laboratories, specialists, etc. In recent years, the application of healthcare IT has resulted in a parallel adoption of EHR/EMR. According to the updated factsheet of 2017 published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was estimated that ~86.9% of the office-based physicians used EMR/EHR systems. Moreover, the Office of the ONC stated that in 2015, ~64% of the physicians used an EHR with the capability to exchange secure messages with patients. Moreover, according to the American Hospital Association Annual Survey Information Technology Supplement, 96% of hospitals in the US adopted certified EHRs in 2017. Similarly, according to research estimates of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) published in August 2017, the annual rate of EHR adoption for eligible hospitals raised from 3.2% to 14.2% after the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. Ineligible hospitals, with a low rate of adoption of EHR, also increased from 0.1% to 3.3%. On account of the facts illustrated above, it is interpreted that the adoption rates of EHR/EMR are rising, thereby providing a developmental area for the market to expand significantly during the forecast period.

Accountable care arrangements represent a variety of different partnerships between healthcare organizations, payers, and providers designed to improve care coordination and individual patient experience, improve health outcomes, and reduce health care expenses.

Many organizations that are participating in accountable care arrangements are using more than one EHR system; for example, a hospital may use an inpatient EHR system, while the physician groups affiliated with the hospital use different ambulatory EHR systems. The use of multiple EHR systems in the same organization opens the new opportunities for the usage patient registry software as it gives enhanced quality through a variety of care management programs and information technology including electronic health records (EHR), patient disease registries, and patient monitoring systems.

The purpose of these organizations is to help reduce the total cost of providing care by delivering higher quality care designed to keep patients healthy is getting solved by the use of patient registry software these Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) are better managing patient-care and focusing on preventive measures. According to the Center for Health Care Strategies, as of the end of the first quarter of 2017, there were 923 active public and private ACOs across the US, covering more than 32 million lives. The increase of 2.2 million covered lives in the past year means that more than 10 percent of the US population is now covered by an accountable care contract.

This will be a great opportunity for the patient registry software to grow in the future as it supports through adopting EHR to improve health outcomes and reduce health care expenses.

Patient registry software in the healthcare industry has simplified data collection for both doctors and patients. However, patient data privacy remains a relevant issue. Even security measures in modern medical software can’t guarantee the safety of data from threat actors and insider threats. The current situation with healthcare data security is extremely dangerous, as patient health information can be sold or used for crimes such as identity theft and insurance fraud, or to illegally obtain prescription drugs. Apart from patient records, healthcare software can contain financial information, which attracts cybercriminals. The outsider threats continue to present new challenges, but hidden insider threats are even more dangerous.

Human threats such as employees or hackers, as the confidentiality of patient data, is supreme and must be considered when designing any sort of digital health technology. The level of risk is typically in proportion with how sensitive the information being collected is and how large the data files are. Some systems require the collaboration of several outside contract organizations, including access to the data, which introduces additional concerns about security and confidentiality and complicates questions around the responsibility of the data.

Moreover, phishing attacks may cause severe damage to data security if healthcare professionals aren’t trained for identifying such attacks. Malware and ransomware can reach EHR systems via downloads, software vulnerabilities, and even encrypted traffic. This malicious software may cause harm not only by stealing data but also by locking users out of their computers and demanding payment to regain access.

In the same way, in healthcare, insider threats might come from medical staff. Employees can cause trouble on purpose (stealing information to sell it) or by accident (disclosing it because of lack of cybersecurity education).

Thus, the privacy and security of the data in patient registry software is a big issue for the implementation of such practices.