¶ … best-of-breed application systems solutions? What are the advantages and disadvantages of integrated application systems solutions? Discuss any experiences you have encountered with either of the solutions. When it comes to selecting either approach, both contain advantages and disadvantages. For instance, "With the best-of-breed approach, you select each software application based on its inherent qualities. If the practice management and EMR systems you choose come from different vendors and need to exchange data, you build an interface that allows that to happen. When combining EMR and practice management systems from different vendors, registration interfaces are the most common. This allows your front desk to automatically send data for new patients entering your practice to your new EMR" (Kleaveland, 2007). However, this can put an additional burden onf members of staff, namely because there's no registration interface. This implies that staff members will have to separately enter patient data in practices management and EMR systems (Kleaveland, 2007). This means that members of staff will have to have both...

Another issue that can arise with best of breed approaches isthat there isn't always the clearest and simplest definition for best of breed: vendors will claim that their products are best of breed, but often times this won't necessarily be totally accurate (Businessfinance, 2001). Thus, as always, it's up to the manager to take a close scrutiny as to how and what the exact needs of the organization are and the specific issues which impact it.
At the same time, there are advantages to integrated systems as well. "Integrated systems share the same database. This means that when your front-desk staff enters patient data into your integrated system, the information becomes instantly available to everyone in the office, using the scheduling, billing, or EMR portion of the system" (Kleaveland, 2007). Other practical issues in connection with integrated systems are the convenience of dealing with one vendor and one point of contact; there also is the lack of needing managing the technical aspects of bolstering and maintaining an interface…