Webinar: Overview of e-clinic 2 – iPads, going paperless and connectivity

Emily MacDowallBlog, Business, News, Software

Ahead of the official launch of e-clinic 2 in March at ACE 2019, our MD, Mark, hosted a webinar to give clinic managers an overview of the new system.

This overview was the first in a series of weekly webinars on e-clinic 2, with specific areas covered in greater depth in later webinars. 

The webinar covers the following areas:

  1. The new interface
  2. Data structure and platform
  3. Connectivity
  4. Becoming paperless
  5. Management information/business intelligence
  6. e-clinic online

1. The new interface

The interface of e-clinic 2 has been completely rewritten, with the biggest change being the full native iPad interface. 

e-clinic 2 is fully compatible with iPad (the only exception is letter writing in Microsoft Word) which means clinics and their clinicians can choose to work from either desktop (Mac or PC) or iPad.

Existing users will notice that the interface retains a familiar shape, with core data on the left and linked data on the right. The design colours can also be altered at the click of a mouse, perhaps to reflect the corporate colours of a clinic. As well as looking better, the new interface offers significant performance improvements.

Another important change is the ability to easily view additional information switching screens. This achieved through the use of popup windows, card windows, and slide and swipe controls. Side-by-side image galleries are also now featured.

2. Data structure and platform

The structure of e-clinic has been streamlined and data rationalised to remove redundancy. Every part of the software is now encrypted, so e-clinic is even more secure. (Note: the link to e-clinic always offered 256 bit encryption but this update adds even higher levels of security.)

The relationship graph has been rewritten, giving significant benefits particularly to those clients who run reports and export data to Excel. The relationship structure has been tightened up and streamlined so users can now only export data directly linked to the table, improving performance.

In the next release, hoped to be in summer 2019, we will add improvements to server CPU utilisation, allowing many more threads to be handled concurrently, a particular benefit to larger clinics.

e-clinic now includes a REST API within the data structure. This technology is the new standard for exchanging data between applications and platforms. 

End-users will also particularly appreciate the increased field validation in e-clinic 2, for example in phone numbers, email addresses, and NHS numbers, preventing incorrect data entry.

3. Connectivity

e-clinic 2 offers much greater connectivity. For example, it will now connect with the following:

Zapier in particular offers many further options for connectivity. Its easy-to-use web application allows connection and automation without the input of the e-clinic team. For example, allowing connection between an enquiry form on a website and e-clinic, allowing leads to be registered directly onto e-clinic. 

All the integrations listed above are available from day one of launch, with many more expected after that. Please note that some of the integrations above will incur an additional cost, more information on exact costs will be available soon.

4. Becoming paperless

The ‘paperless clinic’ is much talked about, and a benefit e-clinic has offered since 2002. However, e-clinic 2 makes the whole process much easier.

e-clinic 2 handles paperless consent forms and medical forms, and offers improved drawing capabilities, allowing the annotation onto a form to indicate, for example, injection sites or areas of pain. This can be done on an iPad or on a desktop computer, perhaps using something like a Wacom tablet. If you’re particularly interested in going paperless with e-clinic 2, our webinar on 20th February will go into more detail. 

A later update of e-clinic 2 will also include web forms.

5. Management information/business intelligence

Clinics are usually very interested in the data and management information they can extract from e-clinic 2.

Although the native reporting in e-clinic 2 provides plenty of insight, Microsoft Power BI adds a new level of data visualisation. 

The web application allows you to create dashboards, reports and charts, and integrates directly with e-clinic. For example, a pie chart of ‘appointments by clinic’ could be included then reports showing ‘invoice total by practitioner’ and ‘appointments by marketing source’, all by dragging and dropping data from e-clinic onto the Power BI workspace. Power BI has a free online application and we would encourage all e-clinic 2 users to give it a go!

e-clinic 2 also links with other management information tools, like Tableau, and will really allow owners and managers to better see what is going on in their business.

6. e-clinic online

e-clinic 2 will also be offering many exciting online features, for example:

  • Lead capture from web forms via Zapier
  • Online patient registration
  • Online booking, including taking a deposit
  • Online payments via Stripe

These features are only the first phase of online developments, with many more to follow. Our webinar on 27th March which focuses on ‘Online booking and payments’ will explore this more.