If your college health or counseling clinic is thinking about switching to a new EHR, here’s the hard truth most teams learn too late: the software decision itself is rarely what derails a launch. The timeline is.

Vendor demos, security reviews, and procurement cycles can all take longer than anyone plans for. Plus, your go-live date isn’t entirely yours; the academic calendar’s constraints heavily influence it.

The smartest way you and your clinic can approach a switch to a new EHR is to deliberately work backward from the date you’d ideally like to “go live” on the new software.

That’s exactly what our interactive decision & implementation timeline is built to do: you set a target go-live date, and every upstream deadline calculates itself.

Map Two Timelines, Not Just One

Most clinics think about “implementation” as the whole project. It’s really two distinct phases.

1. The decision timeline (everything before the contract is signed):

• Internal needs assessment and stakeholder alignment (IT, administration, clinical, and finance all have a say)
• Vendor demos and reference checks
• IT and security review
• Procurement, legal, and budget approval

This phase is almost always underestimated.  Security and procurement reviews at a college run on separate clocks, not parallel ones, and each can take weeks alone. Simply plug your desired (or necessary) go-live date into the tool and it back-calculates your contract-signature deadline — the real “decide by” date if you want to launch on time.

2. The implementation timeline (everything after the contract is signed):

• Project kickoff and workstream assignments
• Discovery, configuration, integrations, and data migration
• Training and user-acceptance testing
• Finally, go-live day!

Our Decision Tool lets you toggle between a Standard implementation (single-clinic, smaller campus) and an Enterprise implementation (multi-clinic, complex integrations, larger enrollment) so the estimate more closely matches your school’s reality.

Why “As Soon As Possible” Actually Matters

Every week you spend deciding is a week borrowed from building, implementing, and training.

If your target go-live date is next August and procurement alone eats two months, the window to evaluate and sign is much narrower. Seeing that laid out — in a List view or a Gantt chart — turns a vague “we should look into this” into concrete internal deadlines you can hold yourself and your colleagues accountable to.

The clinics that launch smoothly aren’t the fastest decision-makers. They’re the ones who confronted the real timeline early and started counting backward instead of forward.

Run your own dates, share the link with your IT and procurement partners, and get everyone anchored to the same calendar before evaluation even begins.

The right tools can help your team provide better care. Our second MedicatOne product release of 2026 introduces three features (amongst many others!) built to save your team time and keep the focus on student care.

This release reflects the needs and preferences of student health providers, counselors, and wellness professionals. Below is a closer look at Uncharted Notes, Note Search, and Note Collaboration, and why each new feature matters for your clinic.

Uncharted Notes: Capture Important Information Outside the Chart

Not every meaningful interaction fits neatly into a student’s medical record. An uncharted note could be used to document a student calling the counseling center with a concern about a roommate, or a report from campus security, for example.

These interactions often live in someone’s memory or a sticky note, making them easy to lose or forget. Uncharted Notes gives your staff a fast, structured way to record these moments without documenting a formal clinical encounter.

This matters because context drives good care. When a counselor or clinician can see the full picture, including the informal touchpoints, they make better decisions and students feel more supported. For clinic and campus leadership, it also means fewer details walk out the door when a staff member leaves.

It’s important to understand that Uncharted Notes are different from Notes of Concern. Uncharted notes do not exist in the student’s chart, whereas Notes of Concerns do.

Note Search: Spot Patterns Across Your Notes

The new Note Search page in the Activity menu lets you build filtered lists of notes in seconds, making it a powerful tool for quality control and operational review. Results can be printed or exported as a CSV.

A few examples of what you can pull:

• Every patient with an influenza-like illness diagnosis who also had a rapid strep test
• Every psychiatry note with a depression diagnosis where a specific medication was prescribed
• Every in-progress note, so you can nudge providers to lock them

These examples are just a starting point. With flexible filters, Note Search gives clinic administrators the detail they need to quickly surface—and act on—trends in student care and clinic operations.

Note Collaboration: Better Care Is a Team Effort

Student care rarely involves just one person. A student will often interact with a medical assistant, nurse, and/or provider during a single appointment.

Note Collaboration lets authorized team members contribute to different sections of a note at the same time, so that documentation can be completed more efficiently.

If a user is granted permission to collaborate on certain Note Types, they can type into one section of the note while their colleague is updating another section of the note. An example of where this would be helpful is if a nurse is documenting results of a point-of-care test, while the doctor is documenting their examination findings.

Users can see in real-time who is documenting in each section of the note. Once all users have completed their documentation, the note can be locked as usual.

Key Takeaways

Our second MedicatOne product update of 2026 is about giving campus health and wellness teams tools that fit how they actually work.

Uncharted Notes capture non-clinical interactions outside of the student’s chart. Note Search leverages filters across clinical notes to quickly surface trends and inform decision-making. And finally, Note Collaboration helps your team complete notes quicker.

Together, these features, along with many others that are a part of this release, will save precious time and strengthen the student experience.

To see these features in action, request a demo with a member of our team.

Additionally, Medicat clients can explore the full product release notes in the Help Center to access further details about all product releases and new features.

Campus health and counseling teams didn’t get into this work to review paperwork or type up notes. They did it to care for students.

Yet every year, more of their day disappears into administrative work  — verifying immunization records manually, chasing down lab results, or charting hours after the visit is over.

That’s the problem Medicat’s AI agents were built to solve. And it’s why we’re not thinking about these agents as one-off features. We’re building a collection of purpose-built agents, each designed to take a specific, time-consuming task off your team’s plate — starting with the two available today, ICM Agent and Note Agent. And more are on the way!

Why “Agents,” and Why More Than One

An agent is artificial intelligence (AI) put to work on a real job that a member of your staff would otherwise do manually. Agents are not chatbots bolted onto your EHR. Each Medicat agent is trained on a distinct campus health workflow, built directly into MedicatOne, and held to the same security and compliance standards as the rest of the platform.

The way we’re leveraging AI within MedicatOne is highly intentional. Campus health and counseling clinic workflow is made up of many different repetitive tasks, and no single tool solves all of them well.

Specialized agents allow your team to tackle those tasks efficiently and thoroughly. This gives your clinic a consistent, safe, and reliable way to adopt AI, as humans remain in control of the student record and your team gets more time to focus on care.

ICM Agent: Immunization Compliance in Seconds

Immunization compliance review is exactly the kind of work an agent should own. It’s high-volume, seasonal, detail-heavy, and pulls skilled staff away from students for hours at a time.

ICM Agent verifies student-uploaded immunization records against your institution’s requirements. It reviews the documentation that students upload to the portal and flags anything it can’t verify, processing a record in roughly 30 seconds rather than the minutes of manual review it takes each person.

It even reads records submitted in 98+ non-English languages, which makes verifying international student documentation far less of a bottleneck.

During implementation, you configure ICM Agent to know your school’s specific requirements, including how waivers should be handled, so it checks for the same things your staff would. As always, your staff can review the ICM Agent’s work and override any compliance status fields as needed.

The result: your team stops doing the grunt work of compliance, remains in control, and spends that time working on more impactful projects over the summer months.

ICM Agent

Note Agent: Documentation That Writes Itself

Clinical documentation is the other great time sink, and it’s often the reason providers feel more like scribes than clinicians.

Note Agent uses ambient listening technology to turn a provider–patient conversation into a draft clinical note, delivered straight into the MedicatOne EHR.

The impact is that providers spend less time typing (during and after appointments) and more time actually present with the student in front of them. Onboarding is minimal; most providers can start quickly with about 30 minutes of training.

Crucially, the provider stays in charge. Note Agent produces a draft, never a final record. Then the provider reviews, edits, and approves every note before it enters the student’s chart. And patients decide whether to use ambient listening at all; they can decline to use this tool during any visit.

Note Agent

What Comes Next

ICM Agent and Note Agent are the first two members of a growing family, not the whole story. As we identify more of the repetitive, time-draining tasks that keep campus health and counseling teams from student care, we’ll build agents to take them on, each held to the same standard of purpose-built design, human oversight, and security-first architecture.

The goal never changes: give your staff more time to deliver care and build genuine connections with students. The agents are just a tool to help your clinic get there.

Curious how agents can help your clinic? Schedule a demo to see ICM Agent and/or Note Agent in action!

Modern healthcare depends on fast, accurate information. From diagnosing conditions to monitoring treatment progress, clinicians rely heavily on laboratory results to inform patient care. Yet in many clinics today, a surprisingly large number of manual processes still exist between the lab instrument and the patient record.

The Hidden Cost of Manual Lab Data Entry

While laboratory instruments are highly advanced, the workflows surrounding them often lag technologically. For example, the manual process of transcribing lab results creates several challenges:

Challenge #1: It consumes valuable staff time. Lab technicians and administrative staff may spend hours each week entering data that already exists digitally. Instead of focusing on patient care, quality assurance, or other critical tasks, staff are tied up performing repetitive work.

Challenge #2: Manual entry introduces the potential for mistakes. Even careful professionals can accidentally transpose numbers, select the wrong chart, or misread a result. These errors can lead to incorrect records, delayed diagnoses, and additional work to correct the issue.

Challenge #3: Manual workflows slow down the availability of results. If lab results must be entered into the EHR by hand, clinicians may wait longer to review them. That delay can affect clinical decision-making, especially when timely treatment is critical.

What Is LabConnect?

LabConnect is a tool that connects diagnostic testing machines directly to the EHR system so results can be transferred automatically. Instead of requiring staff to manually input results, the system captures the output from the lab instrument and securely sends it to the correct patient chart in the EHR.

How LabConnect Works

While the technology can be complex, the workflow it enables is simple.

1. Lab instruments generate results: Diagnostic machines perform tests and produce digital results.

2. The system captures the data: LabConnect integrates with the testing instruments and monitors them for completed results. Once a test is finalized, the system securely captures the data produced.

3. Results are matched to the correct patient: The system associates each result with the correct patient record based on the test order or identifying information.

4. Results are sent to the EHR automatically: Finally, the system transfers the data directly into the patient’s electronic health record. The results appear in the appropriate section of the chart, ready for clinician review.

The Benefits of LabConnect

Clinics that implement Medicat’s LabConnection integration often see immediate improvements in efficiency and accuracy.

Significant Time Savings

Manual data entry may seem like a small task, but it adds up quickly across dozens or hundreds of daily tests. By eliminating this step, LabConnect frees staff from repetitive work.

Technicians can spend more time focusing on laboratory operations, quality control, and supporting clinical teams rather than entering numbers into software systems.

Calculate Your Time Savings with LabConnect

Reduced Risk of Human Error

Even the most experienced staff can make mistakes when copying data manually. A misplaced decimal or incorrect entry can create confusion and require time-consuming corrections.

Automated data transfer removes this risk by moving information directly from the source system to the patient record. This leads to greater confidence in the accuracy of lab results.

Faster Access to Results

LabConnect allows results to appear in the patient chart as soon as the testing machine generates them.

This speed helps clinicians review results sooner and make faster clinical decisions. In situations where timely diagnosis or treatment adjustments are critical, faster availability of results can significantly improve patient care.

Better Use of Staff Resources

Student health teams are under constant pressure to do more with limited resources.

Administrative tasks like manual data entry consume time that could be better spent supporting patients or improving care quality.

By automating routine data transfer, clinics can use their staff’s expertise where it matters most.

Preparing Labs for Growing Demand

Clinics are experiencing increasing demand for diagnostic testing. As testing increases, manual workflows become more difficult to sustain. Staff workloads grow, data entry tasks expand, and the risk of errors rises alongside the volume of results.

LabConnect provides a scalable solution. Because results are transferred automatically, the system can handle increased testing volumes without increasing administrative workload. 

A Smarter Future for Lab Workflows

As student health clinics look for ways to improve efficiency and reduce administrative burden, automating lab result entry is a practical and impactful step forward.

By eliminating manual data entry and ensuring accurate, real-time transfer of lab results into the EHR, LabConnect helps create a more reliable and efficient care experience.

Interested in adding LabConnect to your clinic’s toolbox? Get in touch with our team.

Moving to a new EHR can feel like stepping into a renovation that’s still in progress. The layout looks different. Your “light switches” (aka workflows) aren’t where they used to be. And even if the new kitchen is gorgeous, not everyone is thrilled on day one.

We discussed this and more during our webinar on upgrading to MedicatOne – with candid insights from leaders at Appalachian State University, the University of North Alabama, the University of Utah, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

If your clinic is considering the shift from our legacy software (or another EHR) to MedicatOne, here’s what you can expect to learn from this article: why campuses made the move, how they managed change, what features made an immediate difference, and what they’d do differently next time.

By the way: If you missed the live webinar, you can catch the replay below:

Why Campus Clinics Made the Move to MedicatOne

The reasons varied, but they all connected back to one goal: a smoother experience for staff and students.

Legacy limitations and IT headaches

At Appalachian State, Executive Director Beth Booth shared that persistent IT issues with the RDP environment were creating near-daily disruptions. That pressure made the decision clearer: moving to a web-based platform wasn’t just a preference; it was operationally necessary.

A unified student experience across care centers

At the University of Utah Counseling Center, Scott McAward described a different starting point: their center wasn’t using Medicat at all yet. They were coming from another EHR and went straight into MedicatOne. The driver wasn’t just technology—it was strategy. Their campus leadership wanted a more unified system across health and wellness, including a consistent portal experience for students.

Contract timing and financial practicality

At UIUC, Administrative Nurse Becca Reed explained that contract timing forced a broader EHR evaluation. After weighing options, MedicatOne emerged as the best fit, —and the team also valued their existing relationship with Medicat.

“If counseling is switching, we’re switching together!”

At the University of North Alabama, Sheena Burgreen shared how one clinic’s push for change became a cross-campus shift. Their counseling center needed a new system, like MedicatOne, and that sparked a joint decision: upgrade counseling to MedicatOne and move their student health clinic to MedicatOne through a single, coordinated effort.

Change Management: Treat It Like a Renovation, Not an Update

Nearly every panelist named the same top concern: change. Not because teams doubted the value of MedicatOne, butbecause they worried about workflow disruption, training fatigue, and uncertainty about how their workflows could be moved over to the new platform..

One of the most helpful metaphors in the webinar was this:
Moving to MedicatOne is like walking back into your house after a renovation.
It’s still your house (same database), but things have shifted. And until your team adjusts, small differences can feel bigger than they actually are.

What worked best across campuses

While each school handled change differently, these approaches came up repeatedly:

• Build a “super user” team across clinics and roles. Beth emphasized that having representatives from each department (nursing, providers, front desk, billing) helped staff feel supported and reduced bottlenecks.
• Start with leadership alignment, then build buy-in. Scott shared that leadership buy-in mattered early—especially when staff were entrenched in prior workflows. Interestingly, he noted staff adapted faster than leadership expected once they experienced MedicatOne’s user-friendly, web-based interface.
• Communicate early and often—even when things are still evolving. Becca’s team went live while elements were still changing. Her biggest takeaway? Assign someone to focus on communication, so updates don’t get lost while builders are heads-down configuring the system.
• Set expectations properly: this isn’t “just an upgrade.” Sheena and Beth both said their teams initially underestimated how much front-end build work was needed. Once they understood the upfront work necessary to get maximum value out of the upgrade, the transition felt more manageable (and worthwhile).

What Went Better Than Expected

Even with nerves about change, the panelists shared surprising wins, especially in areas that directly impacted daily workflow.

Front desk and scheduling adoption was fast

Beth noted that front desk staff picked up the scheduling and check-in process in a matter of days. For many clinics, that’s a big deal—because operational friction tends to show up first at the front door.

Staff used the transition to improve workflows

Becca shared a great example: their flu workflow in Medicat’s legacy platform was still paper-based. Moving to MedicatOne gave them the chance to digitize it with a “note favorite” that less tech-comfortable nurses could easily use. The result: smoother adoption than expected.

“It worked how you thought it should work!”

Sheena pointed out something that sounds simple but matters in high-volume clinic environments: staff found the interface intuitive. When they needed to print, attach, or send a secure message, the right action button was where they expected it to be. That reduces training time and frustration.

The MedicatOne Features Teams Love Most

Once clinics settled in, a few standout features consistently improved staff efficiency and student experience.

1. Secure messaging (especially for counseling)

Scott called secure messaging the biggest positive change. It allowed their team to eliminate most email communication with students and reduced the need to copy/paste content into charts—an immediate time saver with clear privacy benefits.

2. Posting lab results directly to the portal

Beth highlighted the ability to review and publish lab results to the portal (with control over manual vs. auto publishing). That shift reduced administrative workload and made it easier for clinicians to keep students informed of their health status without a bunch of extra steps.

3. ePrescribing workflows

Sheena shared that for their medical providers, using Rcopia (especially for medications not stocked in-clinic) was a game-changer. It streamlined prescribing workflows and improved the day-to-day provider experience.

4. Single sign-on

Becca’s team loved single sign-on, which she highlighted as a small feature with a big impact. When providers move between exam rooms and offices all day, fewer logins mean less wasted time.

5. Multiple tabs in one view

Becca also shared that providers appreciated being able to work across multiple tabs within MedicatOne. For example, providers can pull up lab results while they’re documenting a clinical note in another tab, and also have this week’s calendar pulled up. This makes documentation and administrative work quicker and easier.

Lessons Learned: Advice for Clinics Upgrading Next

If you’re preparing for a MedicatOne upgrade, the panelists shared guidance that boils down to a few practical things to consider.

1. Choose your timing carefully

Panelists repeatedly warned against going live mid-semester. Summer rollouts were strongly preferred.

2. Build your questions list early (and keep it running)

Becca recommended maintaining a weekly list of questions, so onboarding sessions stay productive and focused.

3. Clean up Legacy before you migrate

Beth’s advice: if you want to “clean house,” do it before the move. It makes building in MedicatOne easier and prevents carrying forward cluttered workflows.

4. Give your team grace—and make space for feedback

Sheena noted that staff buy-in improved when people felt they had a say. Teams were more likely to propose solutions, not just complaints, when they felt ownership of the process.

Key Takeaways

Upgrading to MedicatOne is a meaningful shift for campus clinics, not a minor update.

These clinic leaders emphasized that when teams plan for front-end build time, build strong super-user support, and select the right go-live window, MedicatOne can significantly improve day-to-day efficiency and the student experience.

If you’re considering the move, start early, ask more questions than you think you need to, and treat implementation as a chance to improve, not just replicate, your workflows.

Interested in seeing what the upgrade to MedicatOne would look like for your campus? Connect with our team.