DRNotes was conceptualized to be a mobile application for doctors that would efficiently capture patient notes and charges for the purpose of
facilitating the claims processing of independent practicing physicians in the United States. A key part of the specification was to create an
application that simplified the entry of Patient Notes. The objective was to reduce the time that doctors spent in capturing notes and the time
spent in reviewing and signing these notes for claims submission.
The core development team for DRNotes is based in the Philippines. In the course of the product development it was realized that DRNotes
could actually be used as a very effective physician based EMR and EHR system in countries that do not have significant penetration rates of
EMR usage such as the Philippines. It was also realized that while the country’s national health insurance service, the PhilHealth, had been
working for over 10 years to develop universal health coverage, the lack of an efficient EMR based electronic claims submission system
hindered the efficient deployment of the national health coverage plan. PhilHealth benefit payments have grown over 300% to over USD 2
Billion from 2011 to 2017 yet the switch to electronic claims and the use of EMRs is still at its infancy. From an initial plan of creating a note
capture and charge capture application for small doctor clinics in the USA, the DRNotes project gained a renewed purpose as an EMR mobile
app that can capture patient notes, ICD10 information and procedure code information to be used to support the digitalization initiatives of the
claims process of PhilHealth. The PhilHealth has already started implementing an electronic claims system (with no EMRs) for the targeted
2,000 hospitals in the country and has stated a desire to shift to an EMR based claims system. Capturing EMR data will bring many benefits
including the ability to use national EMR data to help define national public health policy, but one of the most immediate tangible benefits
would be the ability to use EMR data to assist in the reduction in the high fraud rates in the PhilHealth claims system which is estimated to
dissipate anywhere from 10% to 30% of member benefits.
DRNotes has been built to be usable as a mobile standalone EMR application that can be used by physicians even in remote mountain “barrios”
but can also be connected to a cloud based nationwide mobile network for the purpose of collecting and submitting claims information to the
national health insurance service. In 2016, the PhilHealth covered 91% of the population but only paid for less than 15% of the medical
expenses in the country. But as the country continues its rapid economic growth averaging over 7% over the past 10 years, it is expected that
universal health coverage will become one of the largest social benefits in the country. The standalone DRNotes APP is currently a free
application that can be used by any doctor in the Philippines, but we are still exploring what is the best way to be able to use the application for
public healthcare applications like that of the PhilHealth. Aside from the knowhow we may derive from participation in this digital health
initiative, we hope to tap into external funding sources for the following purposes:
1. Additional development resources to add required functionality.
2. Support pilot deployments throughout the Philippines to demonstrate to the PhilHealth and the Department of Health (DOH) the
benefits that can be obtained through the deployment of a national mobile EMR/EHR system.
3. Develop the operational structures to support the above objectives.