Moving a clinic’s patient records off paper without stopping clinics
A private clinic held every patient record on paper in one room. We digitised registration and visit history one department at a time.
The situation
Where the business started.
All patient records lived in paper files in a single records room. Finding a returning patient’s history took several minutes, and if the file was already with another department it could not be found at all. Nothing could be searched, nothing was backed up, and the clinic had no way to answer basic questions about how many patients it saw or for what.
What we built
- Patient registration and a searchable index, replacing the paper register first: the single highest-traffic point.
- Visit history attached to the patient record, added department by department rather than all at once.
- Role-based access so reception, clinical staff and administration see different things.
- Offline-tolerant operation, so a connection problem does not stop a clinic running.
- Daily backups, which had not previously existed in any form.
We did registration first and left everything else alone for two months. That is why it stuck.
What changed
- A returning patient’s record is retrieved in seconds rather than minutes.
- Records can no longer be in only one place at one time.
- The clinic can answer questions about patient volume and case mix that were previously unanswerable.
- Paper files retained as an archive, but no longer the working system.
Figures and outcomes are illustrative. These case studies are illustrative examples, not records of completed client projects. They describe the kind of work HEDEB does and how a project is structured. Real case studies will replace them as projects finish and clients agree to be named.
Is this your problem too?
Describe what is happening in your business and we’ll tell you honestly what it would take to fix, or whether something smaller would do.