Thanks SOAPware community!

In the past year, we are grateful that SOAPware has been fortunate to have experienced a growth in income. This has allowed us to continue our development efforts. What is particularly gratifying is that this comes during the worst recession since the great depression and during a time of great uncertainty and tribulation within the physician community. This situation has led to an overall slowing in the EMR business for most.

The following from - Why is EMR Adoption Still Slow? – probably explains our good fortune.


"The solution is to purchase a simple, flexible, and inexpensive EMR system. Physicians should select the most basic system that will fulfill their needs and conform to meaningful use requirements. Flexible systems can adapt to new requirements, and may prevent physicians from being stuck with a system they don’t like. Avoiding unnecessary features will reduce prices and reduce implementation time to qualify for the 2011 payments."


Now, SOAPware 2009 is on the verge of public beta, and carries this tradition to the next level. The transition from the old, trusty bicycle (SOAPware v4) to "air travel" the past 3 years has been painful at times for all of us. It has been particularly challenging to build the plane while in flight. Presently, several of the early (i.e. private) SOAPware 2009 beta sites have started using it in production. Especially with e-prescribing, the enhancements and improved ease of use are significant. We are going slow with this release, and are continuing an extended testing and quality control process. However, the increased speed and usability of SOAPware 2009 has proven to be too enticing for many to resist. The initial release will be followed, soon, by an update to include built-in formulary, patient eligibility, and prescription fill histories.

Following the initial release of the billing system, the SOAPware community can anticipate announcements regarding our preferred solutions for patient registry (performance reporting) and patient portal options. We are being careful to architect this transition to a full EHR in a fashion that is as simple, flexible and inexpensive as is possible with the tools that are available. We anticipate the increase in income from sales of our fully integrated billing system will allow for the acceleration of development with product releases coming more quickly.

Along with these software evolutions, we have made great progress putting together an Implementation Toolkit. Drafts of this are now available on request.


Most practices should be focused, at this time, on preparing themselves for the change process this upcoming transition to “meaningful use” requires. While we will be increasing the change management information in SOAPedia, most practices will need some more direct hand-holding along the way. We will be announcing some major changes in our Partner Program to facilitate the creating of local/regional entities to facilitate practices' ability to migrate to true information systems containing real data in addition to the traditional, customary, free-text narratives. This facilitation of practices is not something that is specific or related to the SOAPware EMR, but is a more fundamental cultural change and workflow re-engineering that must take place to meet success with any comprehensive EMR. We are very eager to collaborate with emerging entities that have demonstrated an understanding of this fundamental social change that must take place prior to introduction of health information technologies. Please contact us if you have insights or interest in promoting these initiatives, or know of resources already available in your community.

For most, for the next few months, it is time to be installing peopleware rather than hardware and software.