"FileMaker is a great development tool. There is nothing that I've ever asked of it that it hasn't delivered. I have built an incredibly successfully business on the system."

e-clinic

e-clinic Cuts Cost of Data Management for Private Clinics

Sara Mogford established e-clinic in 2002 after recognising a gap in the market to create data management solutions for private clinics.

"Private health care and cosmetic surgery in particular is a huge and growing market." Sara explains. "There are clinics that are still using paper, Excel spreadsheets or basic software for managing essential patient information. Yet there is a huge opportunity for these types of users to gather all such data in one place and so improve both clinical care and business processes."

The FileMaker solution 'e-clinic' also helps clinics to meet regulatory requirements, comply with the Data Protection Act, as well as legislation set out by the Healthcare Commission, which address aspects such as how data is stored and patient confidentiality.

Sara had recognised that in the hands of experienced developers, FileMaker had established itself as a hugely sophisticated tool. However, it is the platform's flexibility and ease of use that has proved the real business driver for e-clinic. "Although we employ developers, FileMaker also allows people like me, who don't have a developer background, to achieve things. For example, I can easily create reports, add in fields and achieve effective design layouts without passing the request on to my development team."

"What's more, when you take a solution to market it must be accessible to the largest possible audience. As one of the few database platforms to work as well on a Mac as it does in a PC environment, FileMaker offered very significant opportunities to generate customers among Mac users," she comments.

e-clinic's FileMaker solution is provided both as a low-cost, single-user system and also as a fully networked multi-site solution for larger organisations. "e-clinic is used in both small village practices as well as national providers with ten or more clinics – thanks to the flexibility and inbuilt scalability of the FileMaker platform," says Sara.

The 'complete practice management solution', ensures clinics maintain an accurate and up-to-date view of both their business and their patients, by enabling users to:

• Book appointments and manage multiple diaries
• Create multi-dimensional diaries for practitioner, room and resource management
• Establish a patient database with appointment notes and clinical data
• Process invoices and receipts
• Generate letters, reminders, emails and SMS text messages
• Store scans and digital images
• Produce detailed financial and management reports via a full reporting suite
• Manage stock control and set re-order triggers

"e-clinic gives customers a competitive advantage over other clinics, saving vast amounts of time in administration and management." Prior to installing e-clinic, one customer had to spend a couple of days each month compiling information on where their patient leads originated. With e-clinic, they are able to identify the marketing source easily and monitor the entire life cycle of an enquiry – i.e. how the person heard about the clinic, when the enquiry was made, whether they went on to book an appointment and how much money they spent. "Getting this sort of critical business intelligence now takes a matter of minutes, instead of a number of days," says Sara.

Furthermore, by dealing with enquiries and patients more effectively, e-clinic helps users to grow their business. "It's more than just keeping on top of everything from a clinical point of view: e-clinic enables users to actually make more money out of their patient base." For example, the database can be used to send an email to everyone that has made an enquiry within the last month but did not book an appointment; or to contact patients by SMS with reminders of when a particular procedure is next due.

"We have been a member of the FileMaker Business Alliance since our launch and it's great having support from the head office," she states. "When we have a query, they come back to us quickly with a solution and, given that the FileMaker Business Alliance is a relatively small community compared to say, Microsoft Access, we do get a good level of care. They even call us up with leads if a clinic is looking for a solution of this type."

e-clinic is also looking to widen its market scope by tailoring its solution to meet the needs of new sectors, with a package for private dentists launching later this year. "From our perspective, FileMaker is a great development tool and there is nothing that I've ever asked of the system that cannot be achieved using FileMaker," concludes Sara.