Sponsored blog post: Drupal: the wonder CMS

Author Marc Hermsmeyer is an experienced senior management professional in the online media, Internet and mobile software space. Marc’s passions have always revolved around technology and innovation, and in 2012 he had the unique opportunity to join the Achieve team to head up operations for the company. Follow him on Twitter @MHermsmeyer

Open Source software, namely Drupal, can be leveraged to accommodate the technology needs of numerous corporations across a vast spectrum of private and public sectors. The constant collaboration of the Drupal community gives users the freedom to rapidly deploy new innovations in a way that a closed proprietary system does not allow. Here at Achieve we are constantly trying to increase Drupal adoption by developing new solutions to help new stakeholders in new arenas.

We have recently begun developing Drupal solutions for the Healthcare industry with great success. Time and again our clients complain about the lack of extensibility, security, and integration capabilities with their current technology solutions. After making headway into the Healthcare vertical we quickly realized that the pains that Drupal is best at alleviating (workflow, permissions, content editing, user experience, and security, to name only a few), were agnostic of vertical or market.

What was most astounding was how underdeveloped the technology solutions were and still are in this market. Given the Government’s big push to bring Healthcare Providers, Physicians, Hospitals, and Medical Device Suppliers into the 21^st century, the technology needs of this market will continue to grow. As a powerful Open Source platform, Drupal is uniquely poised to alleviate the current and future pains that are confronting Healthcare. We see massive potential for technology solutions that are needed just to keep up with the current administrations mandates in the Affordable Care Act; namely the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act).

How Drupal can make you Healthier 

The Healthcare Industry, in large part, is in dire need of a technology makeover. There remains to be a large number of technology laggards within this market. However, there is no shortage of technology solutions out there. There are a plethora of features that Drupal has to offer that can be of great benefit to the Healthcare Industry.

Drupal’s granular and customizable security permission settings allows for a high level of control and access to each section of the site. The integration capabilities of Drupal are second to none, which allows for out of the box integration with copious 3^rd party platforms such as; Electronic Health Records, Personal Health Charts, Electronic Prescribing systems and other legacy systems used within the Healthcare industry. Drupal gives extensive reporting controls that give site administrators deeper insight into the activity of users. Certain reports can be run that can help to defend the integrity of sensitive patient information. I can go on and on about the possibilities and innovative solutions that Drupal can offer for the Healthcare industry such as; extensibility, quick deployment time, community and talent pool, etc.   

In-Depth Look 

I recently went into depth on the benefits of Drupal for Healthcare in a white paper, How Drupal Can Make You Healthier, which you can get by clicking here or the link below. The white paper elaborates on how Drupal aligns with each new need the Healthcare market requires as well as our strategy as we ventured into the new, untapped and rapidly expanding market. It is essentially an Open Source approach to business strategy, because it is a win-win situation. The faster we as businesses learn from each, the faster we can all realize success through the continued growth of Drupal adoption.