Key criteria for healthcare workflow software

When evaluating healthcare workflow software, four factors matter most: security and compliance, scalability, EHR/EMR integration, and automation capabilities.

Security and compliance

HIPAA compliance isn’t optional. Healthcare workflow platforms must provide controlled access rights, complete audit trails, encrypted transmission, and MFA/SSO support.

Epic, Cerner (Oracle Health), DocuSign Healthcare, and Nutrient Workflow Automation all meet HIPAA requirements, but with different approaches, outlined below.

Epic and Oracle Health — Provide enterprise-grade security as established EHR platforms with data encryption, access controls, and secure transmission protocols (TLS/SSL).

DocuSign — Offers business associate agreements (BAAs) for HIPAA compliance, and FDA 21 CFR Part 11 certification for clinical trial documentation requiring electronic signatures.

Nutrient — Is SOC 2 Type 2 audited (independently audited security controls), provides business associate agreements, and publishes real-time security and compliance reports via its Trust Center(opens in a new tab). Every workflow includes role-based access controls, complete audit trails, encrypted data transfer and storage, and support for SSO/MFA authentication (including SAML 2.0/ADFS/Active Directory). This makes Nutrient suitable for workflows handling protected health information (PHI) across departments.

Scalability

Your platform needs to grow from dozens of users to thousands, and from simple approvals to complex multi-department processes. Epic and Oracle Health handle this at enterprise scale but require significant infrastructure. DocuSign scales easily for document volume. Nutrient scales through cloud SaaS without infrastructure overhead.

EHR/EMR integration

Your EHR holds most of your critical data. Clean integration eliminates duplicate entry. Epic provides 800+ API specifications, and DocuSign connects to certified EHRs via HL7 FHIR standards through Infor Cloverleaf. Meanwhile, Nutrient offers REST APIs, Zapier (6,000+ apps), and direct EHR/EMR integration.

Automation capabilities

Can you build workflows without coding? Does it route intelligently? Can it process documents with AI? These capabilities distinguish workflow platforms from basic tools.

Quick comparison

The four major platforms

Nutrient Workflow Automation

Nutrient Workflow Automation is a flexible platform designed to automate healthcare processes across departments without replacing your existing EHR.

Capabilities

• HIPAA-compliant security — SOC 2 Type 2 audited with BAAs, role-based access controls, complete audit trails for every action, encrypted data transfer/storage, and SSO/MFA support (including SAML 2.0/ADFS/Active Directory). Real-time security reporting(opens in a new tab) provides transparency.
• Visual workflow building — Drag-and-drop, no-code design for forms, routing, approvals, and conditional logic.
• AI data extraction — Uses large language models (LLMs) to extract data from PDFs, scans, and forms, reducing lost records and manual entry.
• EHR integration — Connects with major EHR systems, including Epic and Cerner, through REST APIs, HL7 FHIR standards, Zapier, and Power Automate, enabling seamless data flow without duplicate entry.
• Healthcare templates — Prebuilt workflows for capital expenditure, vendor qualification, onboarding, incident reporting, IRB submissions, adverse event reporting, credentialing, and compliance attestations.
• Built-in signatures — Supports native electronic and PAdES digital signatures.
• Mobile apps — iOS and Android apps with push notifications for on-the-go approvals.

Healthcare-specific use cases

In 2020, 50 percent of healthcare workers experienced burnout from non-clinical tasks like reporting, documentation management, and billing. Nutrient automates these workflows:

• Capital expenditure approvals — Standardize CapEx requests across departments (clinical, finance, IT, compliance) with automated routing and approval tracking.
• Patient data management — Centralize intake workflows, automate document processing for insurance cards and medical records, and ensure HIPAA compliance with complete audit trails.
• Facilities management — Handle building security access, HVAC issues, and maintenance requests through a centralized system instead of emails and phone calls
• Employee onboarding — Streamline hiring with automated background checks, license verification, training assignments, and system access provisioning
• Cybersecurity incident reporting — Centralized incident logging with automatic routing to threat assessment experts
• Healthcare research compliance — Automate IRB submissions, adverse event reporting, and conflict of interest tracking with full documentation

Healthcare organizations like Medcor and GlaxoSmithKline have implemented Nutrient to automate multisite operations and improve end user experience while reducing costs.

Limitations

While Nutrient is highly adaptable and covers a broad spectrum of healthcare workflows — clinical, administrative, HR, compliance, and more — highly specialized or unique processes may require custom development or integration outside the platform’s current capabilities. Nutrient works best for automating operational, approval-based, and repetitive workflows that benefit from EHR integration and require compliance, audit trails, and digital signatures.

Implementation — Template-based workflows go live in weeks. Most clients see ROI within 3–6 months. No infrastructure to buy or maintain. For highly specific workflows, consult with Nutrient’s team to confirm feasibility.

Best for — Healthcare organizations automating operational workflows while keeping their existing EHR — from mid-size clinics to large hospital systems.

Epic

Epic dominates large U.S. hospital systems as a comprehensive EHR with embedded workflows.

What it does well — Clinical workflow automation, interoperability (Care Everywhere exchanges 24 million records daily), enterprise security, 800+ APIs for integration, AI-powered clinical decision support.

Limitations — It’s an EHR first and workflow platform second. Implementation takes 12–24 months and costs millions. Annual maintenance runs 18–25 percent of software costs. You need dedicated IT teams. Mid-size clinics pay for features they never use.

Best for — Large hospital systems replacing their entire clinical infrastructure and willing to invest years and millions.

Cerner (Oracle Health)

Cerner is Oracle’s next-generation cloud EHR launched in 2025 with embedded AI across clinical workflows.

What it does well — Cloud-native scalability, AI clinical assistant, voice navigation, HIPAA/GDPR/ISO 27001 compliance, enterprise integration with Oracle Cloud services.

Limitations — Like Epic, it’s an EHR with workflow features. Existing Cerner clients face a significant migration. Organizations on other EHRs face harder switches. The enterprise focus and complexity exceed most mid-size organizations’ needs.

Best for — Large healthcare enterprises modernizing from legacy Cerner or investing in a comprehensive cloud EHR.

DocuSign Healthcare

DocuSign Healthcare is the industry leader in electronic signatures with healthcare-specific features.

What it does well — Electronic signatures with tamper-proof audit trails, FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance, EHR integration via Epic App Orchard or HL7 FHIR, mobile optimization, and HIPAA BAAs.

Limitations — It’s a document signing tool, not a workflow platform. If your process doesn’t involve a signature, you need another solution. While 46 percent of healthcare providers cite limited EHR interoperability as a digitization barrier, DocuSign works for its specific use case. Costs scale with usage (per user, per envelope).

Best for — Organizations with heavy document signing needs for patient consent, vendor contracts, and compliance paperwork.

Organization size considerations

Your organization’s size determines which platform makes sense — mid-size clinics need flexibility and fast implementation, while large hospital systems require enterprise-grade scalability.

Mid-size clinics (50–500 staff)

Epic/Oracle Health — Comprehensive but expensive. Implementations cost hundreds of thousands to millions and take 12–24 months. You pay for features you won’t use and need dedicated IT staff. Annual maintenance runs 18–25 percent of initial costs.

DocuSign — Quick to implement for signatures, but you’ll need other tools for comprehensive automation. Costs add up at volume (per user, per envelope).

Nutrient — Flexible pricing, starting small. Implementation in weeks, not years. Works with your existing EHR. One platform handles workflows across all departments. Cloud SaaS means no infrastructure overhead. Staff can approve requests from mobile devices.

Large hospital systems (500+ staff)

Epic/Oracle Health — Enterprise-grade scalability proven in the largest health systems. Single platform for clinical and some operational workflows. Deep EHR integration. Epic exchanged 745 billion data points via APIs in one year. Annual costs run into millions, vendor lock-in makes switching difficult, and operational workflows (research grants, facilities, HR) still need separate solutions.

DocuSign — Handles high-volume signatures (100,000+ annually) across multiple sites. Good for contracts and patient forms. You’ll still need workflow tools for non-signature processes.

Nutrient — Fills the gaps EHRs don’t handle. Large systems use Nutrient for capital expenditures, HR, facilities, supply chain, research admin, and compliance — processes that don’t fit well in EHRs. Handles complex multi-stakeholder approvals (physician, department chair, supply chain, finance, CMO all reviewing in parallel). Real-time dashboards show bottlenecks system-wide. Integration with SalesForce, SAP, Oracle, OpenText, Slack, Tableau, and other enterprise systems via comprehensive API.

Why Nutrient works for most healthcare organizations

Epic and Oracle Health are EHR systems with workflow features added. DocuSign handles signatures. Nutrient was built for workflow automation.

Built for automation

Nutrient is a dedicated workflow automation platform, not an add on to EHR systems. Features focus on eliminating manual work: intelligent routing sends tasks to the right approver automatically; dynamic forms show only relevant fields based on answers; parallel approvals let compliance, legal, and clinical leadership review simultaneously instead of sequentially; and automated escalation handles out-of-office scenarios.

[EHRs focus on clinical documentation][hospital faq]. Healthcare organizations also need to automate finance (accounts payable, budget approvals, CapEx), HR (onboarding, credentialing, status changes), facilities (maintenance, security access), IT (service requests, incident reporting), and compliance (policy attestation, audits, risk assessments). Nutrient handles these in one platform.

AI-powered processing

Healthcare runs on documents that require manual data entry. Nutrient’s AI leverages large language models to extract data from insurance cards, invoices, referral letters, and patient forms automatically. A faxed referral gets parsed for patient name, contact information, referring doctor, and reason. It then populates a referral form and triggers appointment scheduling. Staff verify instead of retyping. Real-world examples show organizations eliminating lost records and significantly reducing data entry errors.

Manual data entry errors cost $50–150 each. Nutrient eliminates more than 95 percent of these errors.

Fast implementation

Epic and Oracle Health take 12–24 months to implement. Nutrient goes live in weeks with template-based starts. Organizations can begin with one or two high-impact processes, allowing users to see benefits in months rather than years. Most clients see ROI within 3–6 months, then expand to additional workflows as needed.

Changes don’t require months-long projects. An internal administrator can add an approval step or modify a form field in hours, without lengthy IT involvement.

Lower total cost

Large health systems spend $100M+ on Epic implementations. Mid-size organizations spend millions upfront, plus 18–25 percent annual maintenance fees and the cost of dedicated IT teams.

Nutrient starts small with subscription-based pricing that scales with usage. There are no infrastructure costs (cloud SaaS), and most clients see ROI within 3–6 months. Organizations pay only for what they use.

Mid-size healthcare organizations get comprehensive workflow automation without EHR replacement costs.

Selection criteria

Choose Epic or Oracle Health if:

• You’re implementing or replacing an EHR system
• You’re a large hospital system with IT resources for a multi-year, multimillion-dollar project
• Clinical workflow automation within the EHR is your primary focus

Choose DocuSign if:

• Document signing is your main pain point
• You need FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance for clinical research
• You already have other workflow tools

Choose Nutrient if:

• You want to keep your existing EHR and automate operational workflows
• You need comprehensive automation across finance, HR, facilities, and clinical operations
• You want implementation in weeks/months instead of years
• You need flexible pricing that scales with your organization
• You want AI-powered automation and intelligent routing

For most healthcare organizations, Nutrient provides automation without the cost and complexity of replacing your entire clinical infrastructure.

Next steps

Ready to see how Nutrient can transform your healthcare workflows? Here’s how to get started:

• Contact Sales — Schedule a demo with ROI calculations for your organization
• Healthcare solutions — Industry-specific workflow automation

FAQ