Goals - Why integrate with Epic?

1. Improve productivity by reduced manual data entry
2. Better data quality
3. Powerful reporting (E.g. demographics, consents, surgical pathology reports, etc.)

Implementation Options

There are many ways OpenSpecimen can be integrated from Epic. 

1. HL7 messages
2. Nightly database dumps

Which option to take depends on the institute's Epic IT team (i.e. not by OpenSpecimen team). OpenSpecimen is capable of accepting data in all formats.

Workflows

Adding a new participant

1. Login to OpenSpecimen
2. Enter an MRN
3. OpenSpecimen looks-up Epic data and returns match.
4. If no match found, error.
5. If the match found, the user can review and confirm that the patient is correct.
6. Once created, the details pulled from Epic cannot be edited in OpenSpecimen.

Editing a participant

1. A participant is edited in Epic
2. Information is sent to OpenSpecimen (via HL7 or nightly dump)
3. OpenSpecimen will update its records for the updated information

HL7 based integration

Nightly database export

1. Every night, the Epic team provides a CSV or a database view/table with all the patient information.
2. The schema for the table will be provided by OpenSpecimen.
3. This table will be used as the "staging patient table" which will be used for lookup whenever a user enters MRN in the user interface.