Integrating Drupal and Epic EMR for a Child Development Program

The Challenges 

Sponsored by Loma Linda University Children's Health Program, Help Me Grow IE plays a crucial role in connecting families with young children to screening and intervention services for supporting early child development. Its mission is to ensure that developmental screenings are easily accessible and available to everyone, providing parents with effective resources and referral pathways for identifying and addressing developmental issues early.

Prior to Help Me Grow IE and Hounder’s collaboration, neither Help Me Grow IE or the medical providers they work with possessed the kind of automated functionality needed to quickly enroll children in need of developmental care. This project’s success would leverage Drupal CMS's custom capabilities to deliver the level of automation needed to level up the important work the folks at Help Me Grow IE do every day. 

Project Goals & Strategy

Automating providers' ability to create parent-child profiles

As with all of our projects, Hounder conducted a needs assessment to thoroughly analyze the requirements and objectives for Help Me Grow IE, medical providers, and the families they help.

To ensure a collaborative approach, a cross-functional team was formed, composed of key representatives from both Help Me Grow IE and Hounder. This team worked together to define project goals, scope, and timelines, while also identifying key functionalities and features required for the project. 

This assessment identified the need for a user-friendly form that allows for the efficient creation and transfer of parent-child profiles from the Help Me Grow IE site. This form would automate providers’ ability to create patient profiles, effectively ensuring children are visible within Epic’s system and setting them up to receive the kind of care they need. 

Our Process

Leveraging Drupal’s security and customizability

With its customizability, security, scalability, integration capabilities, accessibility, and strong community support, Hounder’s development team resolved to build the form in Drupal. Its flexible platform allows for use-case-specific forms, while robust security measures protect sensitive patient data. Drupal's scalability handles large volumes of data and traffic, and its integration capabilities facilitate seamless connectivity with Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems. 

Developing Help Me Grow IE's seamless sign-up

The form data itself is supported and forwarded between Help Me Grow IE and Epic’s custom APIs. When a provider submits the necessary parent-child relationship information, the data is then cross-checked with Epic’s data to determine whether their profile already exists. If not, all necessary questionnaires and corresponding resources are provided to quickly create the parent-child profile. 

The design and development phase involved engaging software developers with expertise in integrating systems and building secure data transfer mechanisms. Hounder designed an intuitive and user-friendly form built to capture essential parent-child relationship information, aligning it with Epic's data structure and system requirements. Data validation mechanisms were implemented to minimize errors and maintain data integrity, while robust security measures were put in place to protect sensitive information during transmission and storage.

Wrapping up with deployment and optimization

Implementation and deployment

We developed a comprehensive rollout plan focusing on user training, system integration, and support. Close collaboration with Help Me Grow IE stakeholders ensured a smooth deployment across all relevant departments and facilities. 

Evaluation and optimization

After implementation, the performance and effectiveness of the bridge system were closely monitored. Feedback from providers and stakeholders was gathered to identify areas for improvement. Periodic assessments were conducted to ensure ongoing compliance with data privacy regulations and optimize system functionality.

Project Results

Helping Help Me Grow IE give parents and children the fast, attentive care they need

Help Me Grow IE successfully established a Drupal form that facilitates the seamless integration of parent-child profiles between HMG and Epic. This integration empowers medical providers to effortlessly create and connect profiles from Help Me Grow IE's site, ensuring the efficient and accurate transfer of information to Epic's system.