ReactJS and Drupal: An Ideal Blend for Synergistic Balance

ReactJS and Drupal: An Ideal Blend for Synergistic Balance

Whether you run a hospital, a healthcare system, or you have a solo practice, you depend on technology more than ever before. And so do your patients. But not just any web technology will do. You have wide-ranging technology needs — you have a public-facing website, scheduling, electronic health records/electronic medical records (EHR/EMR), and various other applications to worry about.

And everything needs to load fast, process fast and accurately, and above all, be secure. In Canada, we have the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act (PIPEDA). In the United States, there’s Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and in Europe, there’s the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). All of these regulate what data you collect, and how you need to protect it. 

Your content management system plays a key part in protecting your data, which is why Drupal has become very popular in the healthcare industry. In fact, we highly recommend that you have a Drupal website if you deal with patient data. North Studio is a proud contributor to the Drupal community.

Drupal Content Management System

The Drupal web content management system (CMS) is an open source CMS, meaning anyone can use it, and it’s free. It is completely scalable to grow with your organization. Drupal is used on the back end of web development. It runs your website in the background, and controls how the website works.

Drupal for Healthcare has 3 main benefits for your facility, system, or practice.

Security

According to the HIPAA Journal, healthcare data breaches involving more than 500 medical records are on the increase. And what Canadian can forget the massive security breach at LifeLabs?

With Drupal, you get the most secure option for organizations that work with highly sensitive data. Drupal offers top-notch security for your website and IT system. Drupal meets or exceeds HIPAA encryption requirements. And Drupal is continually updating security measures to help protect sensitive data.

And outside of the healthcare field, Drupal is considered so secure that in the United States, several government agencies use it, including NASA and the Department of Homeland Security. 

Customizable

Drupal is also highly customizable. Build features tailored to your organization, integrate third party applications, and add functionality. For example, with Drupal, you can easily integrate your EHR/EMR system to help medical providers communicate with patients through a secure portal. 

You can easily control who has access to what information. Configure specific role-based controls where you give physicians full access to a patient’s data, but limit information for medical staff who have restricted access. 

Mobile Centric

Healthcare professionals can take advantage of Drupal’s mobile-centric design. This allows nurses, technicians, physicians’s assistants, and physicians alike to use tablets and laptops to collect medical information and access patient records. 

Drupal Applications for the Healthcare Industry 

There are a number of Drupal applications for healthcare facilities and medical practices, including:

  • Main websites 
  • Patient portals
  • Health insurance portals
  • EHR/EMR online databases
  • Employee intranets
  • Extranets to connect related practices and facilities
  • Blogs
  • And more

Medical Systems Using Drupal

You might be interested to know that many well-known medical systems and facilities use Drupal for their websites, including:

  • Emergent Biosolutions (A North Studio client)
  • Kingston Health Sciences Centre
  • Pfizer
  • Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
  • Elsan
  • Jordan Air Ambulance Center

If Drupal is good enough for these organizations, it’s a safe bet it will more than meet the needs of your facility or healthcare system. This is especially true if you customize your system with ReactJS.

What Is ReactJS?

ReactJS is an open source JavaScript library for building user interfaces (UI) on the front end of your website. Created by Facebook engineers, ReactJS is a free JavaScript library that lets web developers like us build dynamic, interactive user interfaces for both web and mobile applications. We can customize the source code to fit your exact requirements.

The front end is what users of your website can see, and what they can interact with. So simply put, ReactJS controls how an application looks and feels to the user. And you can personalize your user experience. 

What Is React Native?

React Native is used specifically to create cross-platform mobile apps for Android and iOS. ReactJS is at the heart of React Native.

Why ReactJS and Drupal Development Are Ideal Together

Combining the beautiful user interface that ReactJS provides with the power, security, and scalability of the Drupal CMS creates an ideal blend for synergistic balance. Pairing the two gives your website and IT systems more than just the sum of the benefits and performance of each open source tool.

Some of your ReactJS and Drupal web development options include:

Dashboards and Visualization Tools for Healthcare Providers

Dashboards and data visualization tools with ReactJS backed by Drupal are secure and intuitive. They both allow the user to quickly interpret and understand the data.  Especially in use-cases like BI and Machine-learning, they are crucial for data-visualization.

Registration and Appointment Scheduling for Patients

Patients can register online and schedule appointments.m. The User interface guides them through each step where they fill in the needed information or upload documents as needed before moving on to the next step. 

Patients can search the Calendar for an appointment day and time with their preferred provider. Once they are scheduled, it will appear in the practice calendar and an email or text (or both) confirmation will be sent to the patient. We can also configure this to send patients appointment reminders asking them to confirm or reschedule as needed. 

Telemedicine

Telemedicine really gained a foothold in the era of COVID-19. And patients were actually happy about it. With the security and encryption of Drupal and the beauty and interactive capabilities of ReactJS we can develop a custom telemedicine app for you. 

This allows your facility or practice to help patients with less critical issues, allowing staff to see the patients who most need face to face appointments or treatment.

Chatbots

We can build a chatbot easily with ReactJS. Chatbots use artificial intelligence to help your customer (your patient). There are several different types of chatbots, including:

  • Informational chatbots that provide tips and answer FAQs
  • Support chatbots, such as chatbots to help with billing questions
  • Information gathering chatbots that help screen patients for issues that need followup
  • Personal nurse chatbots that remind patients when to take medication or check their blood pressure, etc.

Combining Drupal and ReactJS is most beneficial for healthcare websites that have numerous dynamic page elements and a large amount of constantly-changing data that requires real-time updates. With lightning-fast updates, you will always know room availability, scheduling, critical patient care information, etc.

We Can Help You

If the benefits of Drupal development and ReactJS apps and customization sound like a match made in heaven, we can make it happen for your organization. We offer expert web development services to clients in a variety of industries, but we think this combination is an exceptionally excellent prescription for healthcare industry websites. 

Much like the medical and Life Sciences fields, the web development industry has a lot of jargon and terms you may not be familiar with. When we talk, we’ll break everything down so you know exactly what the possibilities are and how we can use Drupal and ReactJS to take your website into the future.

We’re based in Victoria, British Columbia, but we work with clients worldwide. Fill out the “Let’s Talk” form, shoot us an email, or give us a call at 800-215-6702 for a Drupal demo,  and to discuss your needs and how North Studio can fulfill them.