Software deal to automate health records processing

Drug developers and clinicians who want to tap medical records for insight into their research may be in line for a windfall: data capture solutions provider Kofax has signed a software deal to help automate the processing of millions of patient medical records for business process outsourcing provider EDCO Group's hospital and health clinic customers. The $350,000 contract potentially provides automation capabilities to the health document management services that the BPO provides to its 400 U.S. clients.

The EDCO automation effort comprises the processing of millions of patient medical records, according to an announcement. "EDCO estimates it will initially process in excess of 15 million pages of records annually and expand that number to as many as 60 million annually within the next several years," the announcement says. For client efficiency, the EMR implementation will involve no barcodes; however, it is intended to ensure that "data is precisely identified and formatted" to speed data queries and processing and to help ensure compliance.

A panel at last May's BIO conference described the electronic health record as the "breakthrough application" to next-generation IT systems for biotech researchers. And as we've reported, research collaboration is a need being increasingly met by software and other vendors. Healthcare IT company Cerner Corp. for example, markets billions of anonymous patient records to biopharma researchers.

- see the Kofax release