Healthloop
Specializations in care delivery are a natural evolution but they have the side effect of increasingly partitioning processes and, in turn, increasing cost and complexity of coordination. When patient care changes hands, it becomes susceptible to errors and communication failures. ‘Transitions of Care‘ is the broader topic that covers problems that arise when patient moves between...
Read MoreApixio
With regulatory push for EHR adoption, there is an impending avalanche of healthcare data coming in the next few years. Some believe it’s already here. But data can come in different flavors: from the frighteningly common free text to loosely categorized documents to well structured messages. The less structure it has, more hard it becomes for a machine to understand the real meaning...
Read MoreDocmein
Docmein is an online appointment scheduling service focused on private practices. The value proposition is that providers and patients can both use this online service to request and confirm appointments without any software to install. Side benefits are timely email reminders and custom pages for patients and practices. It’s a bit surprising that healthcare continues to get the onslaught...
Read MoreTruthOnCall
Twitter seems to have legitimized the value behind aggregating real-time conversations from a large group of participants. Ironically though, even as twitter continues to find it’s own business model, startups like TruthOnCall are applying the same fundamental concept to healthcare. Pharma, Media, Government organizations sometimes find themselves in dire need for a quick survey of licensed...
Read MoreIsabel Healthcare
In July 1999, Jason and Charlotte Maude started Isabel Healthcare after their then 3 year old daughter Isabel was nearly fatally misdiagnosed during a hospital stay. They involved clinical experts to lead the research and development of a pediatric diagnostic decision support system, and in June 2002 Isabel diagnostic tool was launched. The tool that helped clinicians generate differential...
Read MoreDoximity
Doximity is a mobile-based social network for physicians. It brings back memories of Sermo, which was my first review, written more than two years ago. Doximity was started by Jeff Tangney who was also one of the co-founders of Epocrates- an extremely popular physician information tools vendor that recently filed for an IPO in July 2010. The free app is currently only available for iPhone...
Read MoreTouchDx
Neurologic examinations are unique in medicine. Unlike other fields of medicine in which one can touch (surgery, orthopedics) or see the disease (eg, dermatology, ophthalmology), neurologic conditions often manifest in cryptic ways. Which is why simple clinical examination done with basic tools (reflex hammer, tuning fork, pin…) are always relevant for initial evaluation. Touch Diagnostics...
Read MoreVisualDx
VisualDx is healthcare’s answer to the visual search trend led by companies like search-cube.com, like.com etc. VisualDx helps identify dental and medical diseases by letting providers search for diagnosis based on how a disease looks and presents itself. Rochester, NY based Logical Images is the company behind VisualDx. Understandably enough, it was founded by two dermatologists from...
Read MoreOzmosis
Nothing new here. Ozmosis is based on the now-old concept of physician networking website, with features like knowledge exchange, journal club, cases, alerts, news etc. Looking at dataopedia, they don’t have much traction either (roughly 1K visitors per month). Although I’d always like to write about novel ideas, exceptions like these are purely from a record-keeping perspective....
Read MorePractice Fusion
Practice Fusion is a web-based EMR & practice management system that is targeted towards private practices. SaaS-based EMRs are not new, but what sets Practice Fusion apart is its business model and lineage. Practice Fusion’s is free. Free software, free hosting, free service. It is supported by ‘non-intrusive’ ads. They have figured out a way to utilize Google Adsense...
Read MoreAmericanWell
While the conventionalists argue otherwise, there is some truth to the fact that plenty of health conditions can be taken care of without actually seeing the patient in-person. Based on that assumption, AmericanWell offers an interactive service that lets patients talk to a physician in real time, anytime. The service went live in January this year and initially focusing on Hawaii. The basic...
Read MoreOncocentric
Online communities are nothing new to healthcare. What seems to be the trend is increasing vertical focus. Oncocentric (also called MedTrust Online) was launched in January 2009 as an online community for oncologists. Their aim is to help find, manage and share information by connecting oncologists with each other. They have other features like twitter updates, ‘OncoAssist’ panel of...
Read MoreMedpedia
Medpedia is an attempt to apply crowdsourcing concept to medical knowledge, just like Wikipedia. It launched in beta mid-February this year, with some big names backing it (Harvard, Stanford, NHS, AHA, ACP to name a few). The idea is to create a collaborative body of knowledge using physicians and Ph.Ds as gatekeepers. Anyone can contribute- physicians/Ph.Ds become directors editors (after...
Read MoreMyca
Primary care is a frustrating experience for most patients as well as physicians. Patients find the experience inconvenient, borderline impersonal and hardly get access to any of their resulting information from the visit. Physicians are hard-pressed for time since they are mostly drowned in paperwork. Considering the rise in HSA, high-deductibles, and no-insurance it’s logical that...
Read MorePhreesia
Your doctor may not think of it that way, but some advertisers feel that the time you spend in the waiting room is important. Phreesia offers ‘PhreesiaPad’: a wireless-enabled touch screen device that replaces the traditional forms-on-a-clipboard you get handed when visiting your doctor. The idea is that patients enter their information (age, insurance, complaint, history etc.) via...
Read MoreAskDrWiki
AskDrWiki is an online repository for medial information modeled after Wikipedia. The project was started in early 2007 by four physicians looking for a quick way to share review articles, notes and images in cardiology. The site is a grassroots effort, and geared towards clinical audience- residents, interns etc. Wiki’s are a good way to organize collective wisdom in any field, so the...
Read MoreWithin3
Another social networking take on healthcare- this one has a platform approach for multiple communities exclusively for providers and professionals in the life sciences and healthcare industry. Within3 aims to facilitate ‘trusted relationships’ amongst its members. What sets it apart from the usual networking websites is their business model (plus the fact that its aptly explained on...
Read MoreSimulConsult
SimulConsult is a diagnostic decision support system started by Dr.Michael Segal. It covers 1,800 diseases that have at least one neurological finding in them. SimulConsult has an interesting logic behind it. Roughly speaking, its knowledge is derived from a ‘computational wiki’ that is restricted to physician users only. So its database is not only open for viewing, but users can...
Read MoreSpineConnect
SpineConnect is a knowledge networking site for spine surgeons to collaborate and support each other on difficult cases. It is the first offering from Syndicom, an online services company focused on communication and collaboration platform for the orthopedic industry. Since its launch in early 2006, SpineConnect has gathered 1174 members from 38 countries with a knowledge base of over 900 cases...
Read MoreMedscape Physician Connect
Physician Connect is a new community area on Medscape that allows physicians to securely engage online with other physicians in discussions on clinical as well as non-clinical topics that are relevant to the practice of medicine. The site was launched early this year, and is claimed to have gathered 20,000 registrants since (according to their Q1 FY08 Earnings Call Transcript). I guess that is...
Read MoreCurbside.MD
Curbside.MD is a search engine for finding evidence based clinical information. The idea is to type in the search need as a natural language question that a clinician would normally ask his/her colleague, and get relevant answers from the literature (articles, images, guidelines, etc.) I took it for a test drive with a moderately complex question (‘what is the indication for platelet...
Read MoreSermo
Sermo is a free online community restricted to verified US physicians. It was founded in 2006 by Daniel Palestrant. Although its not the only one in this niche, Sermo has managed to get plenty of press and continuous funding ($3m in 2006, followed by $9.5m and $26.7m in 2007). So what is special about Sermo? For one, it has been forming all the right partnerships. Take its alliance with the...
Read More