Odoo Implementation & Migration Guide for Healthcare Industry

Let’s be clear, in today’s digital world, there is a need to keep up with changing technologies, and so the healthcare industry must not have uncoordinated operations, where they are manually doing tasks, or using disconnected systems to manage their information systems.

Having a well-connected Hospital Information System (HIS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform is not only crucial but essential. It will help the healthcare industry in handling patient records, keeping track of inventory, managing billing, and ensuring regulatory compliance.

But, talking about the real implementation, it is just not about choosing the right fit software. Well, a lot of things go around before a proper implementation like structured execution, having the right resources that are trained to do so, and integrity of the data as well.

But, alas, the hospital, or as we say the healthcare industry is not able to achieve this significant leap. The main reason, as we have experienced is a lack of domain experience and structured planning.

Well, so this guide is going to take you through what, why, and how to execute the Hospital Information System (HIS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) the right way.

Let’s Check where the Hospitals are Struggling

Well, there are many baseline issues that hamper healthcare industry companies from getting into the implementation process. Let’s break these into parts for a better understanding –

• There is a lack of required skills and training for the project teams for transformation.
• People are basically unsure about the methods they should go with the implementation process like Agile, Waterfall, or something else.
• There is no clear project governance structure, meaning that the user roles, their responsibilities, and how they should follow the escalation paths are not defined.
• There might also be an absence of feasibility studies or analysis that can gauge the benefits of ROI/TCO.
• With HIS and ERP taken up as independent and separated functions the healthcare blueprints are not coinciding with each other for a proper workflow.
• The quality assurance and testing team might be taking things lightly or working in a rushed scenario.
• User acceptance testing which is a major part before going live might be skipped or done by a IT person only.
• Minimal validations might be done when things are rushed for data migration.
• No implementation of rollback management, hence, going live can be chaotic.
• Frustrations jump in when there is no post-live technical support.

What are the main problems with the current approach?

Let’s give you some pointers for what exactly the healthcare industry is facing :

• A gradual and often unplanned expansion of a project’s scope beyond its original boundaries and timeline, and slippage due to no proper methodology implementation.
• Weak governance that over time tends to bring in more issues are leading them to poor accountability and decision making.
• A lot of surprises come in when a feasibility check has not been taken care of in the first place.
• There is no integration, so there are more gaps( between HIS and ERP) due to unplanned connected systems.
• Users don’t trust the system due to it’s instability as the UAT and testing implementations were not done in the right way.
• Users stop using the system, thereby a drop in productivity, as no post-launch support is there or functional training.

How to implement HIS & ERP alongside migrating data

For a successful transformation, let’s break down the structure for you to easily understand –

Methodology Selection

You should implement the hybrid approach that allows you to make use of agile for user interface development and design. Apart from that, make use of the waterfall methodology for core integrations and other financial module applications. Also, you must outline the process from the start so everyone involved knows how the delivery will work.

Project Governance Structure

To take things in the right direction, you need to have the right governance. Here is a governance structure that can help you –

• Project Management Office (PMO).
• Steering Committee for company executive oversight.
• Functional Workstreams checks, which people to include from clinical, finance, procurement, and others.
• RACI matrix chart creation can help define the roles and responsibilities of each functional workstream person involved.

Feasibility Analysis

This step will require you to thoroughly conduct a workover on –

• The financial evaluation for Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of having a product or a service throughout its complete life, including upfront cost and continuous expenses.
• Check and formulate the ROI projection.
• Check whether you have the required IT infrastructure in place and do a scalability audit.
• You also need to check on the change readiness assessment altogether.

Hospital Blueprinting & System Design

Let’s see how we can map the right workflows within the hospitals for a proper design of the system. Here, we need to make sure that we create and develop a proper end-to-end process map that is in sync with each of the steps.

• Map out the complete flow in the clinical section from the patient’s admission to their discharge.
• Check and draft the financial processes in your hospital that cover the flows from billing to accounting.
• Make sure that the admin functions are available so that they can have admin rights to manage the HR, procurement, and inventory section workflows.

Also, you need to be sure about whether the HIS modules like EMR, LIMS(laboratory information management systems), and RIS(radiology information systems), work closely with the ERP modules, such as finance, supply chain management, and HRMS.

Start Coding and alongside do Testing

Keep in mind the approach you must use: build, test, and deploy. The coders should build modules, then for each module, get it quality assured and tested, and then deploy the module accordingly.

• Modules of an application should be unit tested in isolation by developers.
• Integration testing must be carried out by the respective QA teams.
• After each sprint, make sure that the updates made to the code(like new feature addition, bug fixing) work fine and stay the same way through regression testing.
• Everything, while testing, should be tracked like test logs and bugs for traceability.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

This UAT section is most important in this implementation cycle. You should run a formal UAT phase that includes end users from various departments in the hospitals, such as:

• Nursing staff
• Billing clerks
• Medical officers
• Lab and pharmacy teams

After these end users have checked and operated their flows, you must document their feedback to create an issue log that can be used to fix any issues before going live with the system.

Training

The training part is another important phase, and you have to make sure that a planned role-based training program is set up.

• End users can check the workflows via live sessions using the demo data that you have set up.
• Create interactive videos or LMS modules that can help them achieve confidence to use the system in a structured way.
• After completing the training, create a refresher training before taking the complete system to a live environment.

Data Migration

Now, we have the most important step that takes care of the migration of the existing data that needs to be transferred to the newly set-up system. For the same, we can make sure that we follow the 4-step procedure here, which includes the following points –

1. Make sure to get the data mapped between your old and new systems.
2. Double check and get the data cleansed, this involves removing duplicate entries and fixing format issues(old system data format with the new system).
3. Go forward and make sure to test the data migration in the production environment, and after discussing with the team, if the data was properly migrated and any further checks and fixes are required.
4. Lastly, you are ready for the final migration before go-live with backups as well.

Time to Go-Live

On the day when you are supposed to go live, do this in phases and not all together. So you can start the live process, but do it in stages.

• First, you can start with the finance and procurement modules.
• Then, go with the HR and inventory modules.
• Finally, go live with clinical modules.
  
  While following the above steps, it’s mandatory to keep a plan for rollback along with the 24*7 support team, and they should be on standby.

You are Live Now – Get additional Support (3 Months)

After going live, you must make sure that you have an ample amount of additional SLA based support from the implementation and migration teams. For the same, you need to ensure that they provide –

• Support with a ticketing system where you can raise a concern and get a resolution for the issues.
• Daily meetings where team members discuss progress, identify any obstacles, and plan for the day ahead for the initial 30 days.
• A weekly check with the various department heads to ensure everything is working as it should.
• Monthly performance review dashboards can help you with any further optimizations for the implemented system.

What Hospitals Gain from Doing the Right Implementation

Let’s break it down into a tabular format to gain insights into the right ERP implementation and migration.

Performance Area	Measured Improvement
Project Delay Reduction	25% shorter timelines
Budget Adherence	20% improvement
Staff Proficiency	60% increase in system usage
Integration Errors	30% reduction
Post-Go-Live Errors	50% drop in incident reports
Data Accuracy	98% clean, reliable patient and billing records
User Adoption	3x faster than non-trained peers
Go-live Continuity	100% uptime of critical departments
SLA-based Ticket Resolution	90% issues resolved in under 48 hrs

Conculsion

Lastly, we would like to state that a successful HIS and ERP transformation is more about a well-executed structure, with trained people, and clean data migration. So, if you are one of those who want to experience a smoother transition, faster ROIs, and great patient experiences, then it is a must to invest in governance, testing, training, and post-live support for a successful Odoo implementation and migration.

Also, to mention here, if you are missing out on these steps that we have covered, then it will lead to confusion, inefficient working, and poor adoption. So, just follow the proven roadmap and make your hospital’s digital transformation more predictable, quantifiable, and need not to say completely successful.

If you are missing post-go-live support or need help with Odoo implementation and migration for the healthcare industry, we will be more than happy to assist. Just drop us an email at gaurav.kumar@apagen.com or call us at +91-9971800665

Our Odoo implementation and migration healthcare consultants will ensure an on-time delivery of your project, within budget, and fully adoptable by your hospital workforce.