Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#2It's great to see more and more companies tackling the healthcare industry. Although you can get the most cutting edge medical treatment in terms of surgical procedures and CT scanners - storing and communicating most types of data is archaic. It's primarily because most physicians and hospitals do not see how moving to an electronic medical records system helps their bottom line, with the exception of electronic prescriptions, which can reduce errors that result in death.
It's actually sad that we need a stimulus to do all this. We really shouldn't. If there are more and more providers offering services at a competitive rate, doctors and hospitals would more readily switch over. Right now AllScript is charging close to $700 a month at our hospital (that's the discounted rate btw) to use their EMR system. With the understanding that one would get the 44K grant from the government. That's an absurd amount to charge for any such system. I'm not familiar with what DrChrono is offering, but at least their price point is reasonable and if there were other providers in the price range as well, docs and hospitals would switch without the need for a stimulus.
Our own office went electronic before there ever was such a thing as a stimulus. Just cause it seemed like the right thing to do for ourselves and for our patients.
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#3Love this. The health care industry was due for some needed technology innovation in regards to billing and prescriptions and the iPad is the perfect platform to do so.
Can someone make a "doctor's handwriting" font?
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#4Cool.
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#5While I agree that the healthcare industry is ripe for innovation, I think it's a very hard industry to get into. My gf is an ICU nurse here and is constantly telling me how averse to technological change everyone in the hospital is. Nurses and doctors have even quit when the hospital has implemented new software in the past. In addition, a lot of people are jumping on the healthcare bandwagon right now. Lots of great ideas out there, but I'm skeptical that a new system will be taking off on a large scale anytime soon.
Just my two cents, but best of luck to all the startups trying to shake up that industry.
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#6Check out PracticeFusion.com. It's free for an unlimited number of doctors and is a web application, so you can use your existing laptop/desktop.
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#7Love this. The health care industry was due for some needed technology innovation in regards to billing and prescriptions and the iPad is the perfect platform to do so. Can someone make a "doctor's handwriting" font?
sure, though rendering random shapes on the screen might be easier and will achieve the same results (utter confusion by pharmacists, nurses, etc, and subsequently poor patient care)
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#8Glad to see DrChrono taking health care on and I hope many others follow. With that said ...
The problem with the healthcare industry's lack of modern technologies isn't a technology issue - the tech that doctors and hospitals need to manage EHR/EMR/PHR existed 20 years ago. This isn't a computer problem, it's a human problem.
You wouldn't believe the hoops I had to jump through to get a Django app into the VA in Los Angeles. Why? Because Python isn't an approved language and Postgres isn't an approved DB. "Someone" has to approve them and I'm guessing "someone" has something else they'd rather o. They're both on the "For consideration" list. Anyone who has worked in a bank can probably relate.
So we put our Django app into a JAR file and run it using Jython. "Oh it's Java now? That's OK."
I think the true tipping point will be when people of a new generation (readers of HN perhaps?) become hospital administrators and with that bring a new culture and view of technology.
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#9I take my hat off to what Drchrono is doing in the space. They are moving the discussion forward. It's a fact, Dr's love the iPad. They want more medical and healthcare related apps on the iPad. Drchrono's platform is a big win. Nevertheless, getting one doctor or a small office of doctors to use an EMR/EHR is one thing, getting an institution to use a system is quite another. I work for such an institution and have built solutions that are in production now. Believe me, it is an incredibly difficult, time consuming, error prone and expensive proposition.
Where government intervention could really shine is in offering incentives for interoperation by way of public API publication. As a developer in this space in an institutional setting, I can tell you from years of experience that an institution of any meaningful size is going to have many, many electronic system repositories of varying depth and breadth. The problem from my vantage point is that it is nearly impossible to get these systems to talk to each other to do necessary data exchange. Multiple systems that refuse to interoperate will become a major stumbling block in the short to mid term. Eventually this will all shake itself out but I would rather that be sooner than later and government policy can do a lot to make this whole endeavor work better.
As it stands, virtually every single provider is entirely focused on "owning" the entire pie. What they should be focusing on is making their applications "team players" that are able to integrate into a suite of legacy applications. Not doing so is a major mistake because, as we know, there is no single tool that is right for every job. The healthcare field is so varied and so fractured from a specialists perspective that you need specific solutions for specific situations. I am absolutely in favor of using as many tools as necessary as long as there is some mechanism for information exchange. I think the ability to exchange data will be the critical differentiator of the next generation of healthcare applications.
Re: Drchrono (YC W11) is building a health care revolution on the iPad
#10It's great to see more and more companies tackling the healthcare industry. Although you can get the most cutting edge medical treatment in terms of surgical procedures and CT scanners - storing and communicating most types of data is archaic. It's primarily because most physicians and hospitals do not see how moving to an electronic medical records system helps their bottom line, with the exception of electronic pre…
$700 per month or $44K total is not high for such a system. It is not uncommon for enterprise systems to cost thousands of dollars per user. You must realize that the sales cycle for a hospital can be years, 24 hour support must be provided, hospital IT staff is often incompetent and clinicians are very demanding users.
Disclosure: I work for one of Allscript's competitors.