Arfinn Learning Solutions, Inc. recently added some important new features to its online peer-to-peer portal which allows medical professionals to share HIPAA protected patient treatments and efficacies for cannabis and other non-traditional practices, while also gaining valuable analytics regarding their own practice.
The website officially launched in January 2019, with limited access to the data, but analytics regarding cannabis efficacy treatments began last December. Medical professionals using www.arfinnmed.com have access to a dashboard showing their patients’ cannabis treatments and efficacies. 
The newly released functions are expected to help physicians save time and money, while securely keeping patient records through its EMR services.
The newly released functions are expected to help physicians save time and money, while securely keeping patient records through its EMR services.“We have improved the workflow within Arfinn Med to ultimately save physicians time,” says James West, Arfinn CEO and founder. “Our free Electronic Medical Records services allow physicians to easily schedule appointments, create templates to quickly generate exam notes, and have access to updated analytics regarding treatment options.”
The most popular feature the company recently released was a patient portal and a text message tool that automatically is sent to patients asking for them to rate their symptom improvement.
“Not only will this help physicians stay in contact with their patients, it will also allow them to collect efficacy data much quicker to help inform their recommendations,” explains West. “All of this is in addition to the suite of functions already in use like dosing reports, research links for like and similar qualifying conditions, and reports on treatment outcomes. The patient portal and text message updates regarding patient treatments are very popular with physicians.”
West’s interest in medical marijuana stems from learning about the many health benefits credited to cannabis. As someone who has dealt with conditions like insomnia and chronic pain, he says he wanted to learn more about how it could help him.
“I quickly found that there was a lot of contradictory information, and since it is so hard to conduct research with it, I wanted to allow physicians to share what was going on in their practices regarding cannabis,” he says.
West created the portal because he believed that there was currently not enough information regarding the benefit of medical marijuana (and its dosing) for physicians and patients. He believes that the portal will be a critical resource for physicians and patients to discover, report, and track cannabis treatments so other people interested in potentially using cannabis can learn from it.
“We also think that by being a free EMR for physicians, we will allow physicians to easily keep records for their patients, but also contribute to the understanding and application of medical marijuana,” he adds.
While West acknowledges that there is definitely still a stigma attached to cannabis, he notes that they are discovering through their data that this treatment route is truly helping people and reducing the symptoms of a wide variety of conditions.
“I think some people also just assume that cannabis gets you high, but our data is showing amazing outcomes with CBD dominant ratios,” he says.
One change he hopes to see in the cannabis industry someday is that it needs to be more available for researchers to get their hands on it to start really getting into how it can help people.
“I think there is overwhelming support from the community to at least honestly discover its medicinal benefits and how that can be applied to help people with a wide variety of conditions,” he says.
