Allscripts Healthcare Solutions is the leading provider of point-of-care decision support solutions for physicians. Delivered over wireless handheld devices or desktop computers, Allscripts’ modular TouchWorks™ clinical automation software helps physicians eliminate medication errors, reduce lost charges and improve workflow. Allscripts’ cure for solving workflow process and other issues associated with developing TouchWorks? Elsinore Technologies’ Visual Intercept Enterprise Suite 3.0.

Examining Visual Intercept’s benefits

A longtime user of Elsinore Technologies’ Visual Intercept Desktop 2.0, Allscripts recently upgraded to Visual Intercept Enterprise 3.0 to help manage issues that arise during the development of TouchWorks and several other smaller software projects. Visual Intercept’s unique dual licensing allows Allscripts to implement both the desktop and Web version of the software for one price. This flexibility helps ease the user transition from the desktop to the Web-based interface and enables Allscripts’ developers to take advantage of features that are unique to the desktop client, including Microsoft Visual Studio and Office integration, VBA coding and mass update functionality.

“Implementing Visual Intercept helps us stick to a consistent workflow process, making software development more efficient and reducing the communication errors that can affect development time and product stability” says Terri Lampman, Software Quality Assurance Manager at Allscripts Healthcare Solutions.

Lampman and her team have been impressed with the improved user interface in the Web version of Visual Intercept Enterprise 3.0, as well as with the software’s improved functionality. Lampman points to Visual Intercept’s robust, easy-to-use search tool as one of Visual Intercept’s major productivity features. The Visual Intercept Quick Search tool allows users to perform searches by keyword, document ID or document attribute in a simplified query-by-example form. In addition, Visual Intercept’s Query Builder enables the creation of simple to complex document queries that can be saved to each user’s profile.

“We have nearly 13,000 incidents, located in hundreds of folders and sub-folders, logged for our TouchWorks product alone,” Lampman says. “The Search and Query Builder features are real time savers for us.”

Visual Intercept’s fully customizable status promotion model also helps simplify the software development process. Instead of having to query every day to find out what task each developer is working on, managers can create rules that trigger automatic e-mail notifications about incident status and assignment changes.

And, with 65 developers working on several projects at once, Visual Intercept’s project-oriented approach has been invaluable. Visual Intercept organizes data, workflow and notification rules and document security within a nested hierarchy of projects, allowing Allscripts to track vast numbers of incidents for multiple projects and products without compromising the ability of individual teams to focus on the issues relevant to their work.

Elsinore adds the right touch of customer support

Equally as impressive as Visual Intercept Enterprise 3.0’s capabilities, says Lampman, has been the level of customer support she has received from Elsinore Technologies. “Working with Elsinore’s support team during and after the 3.0 upgrade has been a great experience,” Lampman says. “When I call other companies for support, I have to go through hoops to actually speak to someone without waiting for a return call that takes days to get. Elsinore has been so friendly and responsive that I feel like their most important customer.”
Working with Elsinore helps Allscripts understand how their customers need to be treated, Lampman continued. “Elsinore’s outstanding support staff not only takes care of our Visual Intercept support issues, they serve as lessons in service that we pass along to our customers.”

Prescribing Visual Intercept for other issue management applications

Based on Visual Intercept’s level of performance and Elsinore’s level of service, Lampman is encouraging other uses of Visual Intercept at her company. For example, since developers currently use Microsoft Project to manage all phases of software development, Lampman is looking into Visual Intercept Project. Used in conjunction with Microsoft Project, Visual Intercept Project allows members of core project teams and extended teams to quickly identify and dynamically manage the unexpected issues and events—ranging from design flaws to a team member’s unforeseen absence—that affect a project throughout its lifecycle, helping promote on-time, on-budget results. Lampman is also exploring the possibility of using Visual Intercept in a software support help desk function.

For now, Elsinore and Visual Intercept are making sure that Allscripts’ software development quality assurance process continues to have a clean bill of health.

About Allscripts

Allscripts Healthcare Solutions is the leading provider of point-of-care decision support solutions for physicians. The Company's TouchWorks software products enhance physician productivity using a wireless handheld device or desktop workstation to automate the most common physician activities including prescribing, capturing charges, dictating, ordering labs and viewing results, providing patient education, and taking clinical notes. The Company also provides medication fulfillment services. Additionally, Allscripts provides patient compliance and healthcare product education services for physicians through its Physicians Interactive™ unit. Allscripts provides services to over 20,000 physicians across the U.S. TouchWorks and Physicians Interactive are trademarks of Allscripts Healthcare Solutions. Visit Allscripts on the web at www.allscripts.com.

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