A fractured architecture between different electronic documentation systems is less the exception and more the rule in business models with affiliated doctors. Having a large number of interfaces would only be a partial solution, because they cause issues during maintenance and are prone to errors. This raises the question as to how information can be transferred neatly from one electronic documentation system to another, ideally without being transferred manually.

Dr. Smith is an affiliated physician with his own private practice (for outpatients). As a modern doctor he uses an electronic patient record in his practice. Some of his patients are treated in the hospital where Dr. Smith has an affiliation. The hospital uses an electronic patient system as well. Unfortunately there is no interface between the systems of the hospital and Dr. Smith’s. The hospital refuses to do so as there are many other affiliated physicians with a broad variety of systems. In conclusion each doctor has to duplicate the information entries in the systems.

Insurance companies and banks have a similar challenge, as security aspects prohibit interfaces between systems. The solution could be a virtual robot, which has access privileges in two different electronic documentation systems, reviewing when new data is entered into data fields and sorting the corresponding instance in the other system. In practice: The doctor records their in-patient notes on their practice system, and the robot transfers this onto the hospital system, or vice versa. The challenge here would be to find a robot which is easy to configure, can be controlled by the user and which can take on different document transferral tasks.