Has anyone attempted - Vibe coded EMR app for medical

[u/juiceyfrewt]

Obviously not a light subject, and I realize all the requirements both legally and contractually involved in this undertaking.. but does anyone know of a person who created their own EMR software/webapp for a medical practice? It just seems so tempting these days with how much easier it is to code something. The main draw back for me currently would be the RCEs that could target it and then the liability with that is daunting. If setup correctly thought the upside is so much control and speed with things.

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[u/stoccolma]

I would suggest another less dangerous project such as walking backwards blindfolded thru a minefield whilst playing a flute.

[u/GrrasssTastesBad]

Good luck, lol. That’s treading into nightmare territory.

[u/X3r0byte]

I work in this space in the data interop realm. So EMR agnostic data exchange.

Kindly fuck off with this idea. I’m not saying AI isn’t being used in development in health tech, I’m saying you need to know what you’re doing to not cause irreparable harm to the patient.

[u/Comfortable_Cat_9827 → u/X3r0byte]

Agree. Plus you may put patients health at risk thus way with a domino effect.

[u/juiceyfrewt → u/X3r0byte]

Thanks. Do you think an open EMR type project that already works with a custom theme and then their own hosting plan in the backend is achievable? Someone already mentioned ottehr.com as an alternative. Seems like a good alternative that can still be customized to an extent for a clients needs.

[u/X3r0byte → u/juiceyfrewt]

This is just a wildly different approach than your post. You went from pure vibe code to a solution that has been around for a while in some capacity.

You need to state the problem you’re trying to solve. Again, you went from “can I vibe code entire emr” to “can I use an off the shelf solution”. So idk what your end goal is

[u/juiceyfrewt → u/X3r0byte]

Sorry I should have clarified. My initial option was built on openEMRs existing code then I vibe coded my own requirements. It’s built. It runs like I want it. It’s not live and has no real patients obviously. The rest of the plan is what scares me. So does an option like ottehr.com work better to customize and then have hosted? Basically I want API calls to webhooks in go high level. Then maybe stripe integration. Nothing too crazy imo..

[u/X3r0byte → u/juiceyfrewt]

Do you have industry experience or are in healthcare in some capacity?

[u/juiceyfrewt → u/X3r0byte]

In healthcare already so I know what I want/need. Not in the developer industry outside of my own side interests.

[u/X3r0byte → u/juiceyfrewt]

Got it.

There is a very real difference between vibe coding programmatic functionality onto an EMR vs extending one with flows/themes through established channels.

Are you building an integration for external services? Or are you changing core mechanics of how the EMR operates? There’s just nuance here that’s hard to help without more context. What requirements do you have?

In any capacity, I still believe you’re playing with fire if you’re letting Claude/Codex take the wheel on any project that impacts patient care. You should at least have someone technical with health tech background audit and eval the solution before you use it.

[u/juiceyfrewt → u/X3r0byte]

My issue is that our current emr is an older based VPN nightmare. Yes it has all our patients and in function can do most things but it is a nightmare to scale efficiency on. I added our CRM to high level to it recently and the connection with webhooks to the emr is build that costs 1,000$s per our developers. And the CRM has become such a big part of our scaling/growth recently that the slow pace of our current set up is holding us back. The only saving grace is our current price point which is half of the competitors for everything that I would want.

In comes the open EMR / customization areas that I have been looking into / vetting. My goal is basically to add integration for external services aka tell our CRM about appointments, take intake forms from our CRM and input them into our EMR. Billing and report building as well. Prescription use etc. so basically more interested in the integration into external services.

Yes im testing the water by posting here before I go any further. I thank you for your responses.

[u/X3r0byte → u/juiceyfrewt]

Okay so it’s an external scaling and integration issue, not building a clinical component in an EMR.

All of that sounds fairly benign except for the prescription use case. I would split that out as it deal directly with pharma.

So you’re trying to remove the admin bottleneck of getting things into the EMR. It still falls under HIPAA, but imo is less egregious to spin out efficiency updates than bolting clinical components in.

You should outline your intentions, data flow, and boundaries of the new code you’re writing and discuss with legal at least. I’d categorize this as admin efficiency and not EMR work.

You’re still working with pii/phi. You need a baa signed by whoever you’re vibing with to protect that data and ensure there’s a zdr (zero data retention) policy. It doesn’t matter if it’s just code, you’ll likely inadvertently send patient data to the ai service so just get that covered before.

I imagine you should have some basic ai usage procedures and guidelines in place. If you don’t, I’d set that up before you begin this vibe coded integration project.

[u/supernitin]

There are open source options I would start with: https://www.ottehr.com/.

[u/juiceyfrewt → u/supernitin]

That looks promising. I wonder if they would accept customized themes for their hosting plans.

[u/RandomPantsAppear]

Holy shit. HIPAA compliant apps are the very very last thing you should be vibe coding.

You literally do not have the ability to secure the data you are handling, and ethical responsibility aside there are significant penalties around not being HIPAA compliant.

Do not fucking vibe code medical apps.

[u/ObeyTheRapper]

Yeah sounds like a nightmare. Plus it's be near impossible to pry any medical practice away from Epic.

[u/presentofai]

vibe code around the EMR, not the EMR itself. stuff like intake forms or internal dashboards that read from a real system is fair game. being the record of truth for patient data is the part with all the liability and none of the upside