Apple released this great video showing off how the iPad can be used in a medical setting. The video features St. Louis Urgent Cares.
For more information, apple.com.
The video shows off how drchrono makes doctors mobile.
The US healthcare system needs change. There are two waves of change that are making this a reality. First, the government is pushing doctors to go digital, injecting over 19 billion dollars in incentives to doctors push doctors to go digital. Doctors will start receiving this government incentive money starting this Fall. The government is promising each doctor 44k+ in incentive money for using government meaningful use certified EMRs.
The second wave of change pushing doctors to go digital are the new agile age of mobile computing. Doctors are generally use to clip boards in exam rooms and waiting rooms, this will be changing. Apples new iPad is a game changer. Not only is it inexpensive but the battery life is somewhat amazing. The device can stay charged in sleep mode for almost a month! An once turned on can go for days. There are estimates that 4 out of 5 doctors will own iPads by the end of 2011. Doctors are actually early adaptors to iPad technology. They see iPads as a clipboard replacement.
The digitization of medicine is creating lots of opportunity for tech entrepreneurs. There are a new bread of company popping up, healthcare startups. Companies embracing new technologies. Companies not scare to take on the challenges of healthcare. A few examples of this are hardware companies like Halo Monitoring focusing on building new ways to help take care of our elderly. Companies who focus on building stethoscopes and other devices that plug into iPhones for a new generation of tech doctors. Companies that focus on building amazing mobile healthcare solutions like Remedy Systems. Companies like Agile Diagnosis that are giving healthcare professionals accurate and efficient diagnosis. Mobile software focused companies like drchrono, whom focus on building a electronic health record platform with a focus on the iPad EHR. Michael and I the founders of drchrono think this is the right place and right time to be in HealthIT. Even the design team from the famous firefox browser have decided to move into the HealthIT world focusing on a new startup called Massive Health.
Venture capitalist that have never ventured into the healthcare sector are starting to jump into the Health IT game investing large amounts of money. There are even a new bread of accelerator programs modeled somewhat like the Y Combinator program. Accelerator’s in healthcare are poping up across the Country, one example being Rock Health, there are others. Some of these accelerators are being created by Venture Capitalists and others by Insurance companies. The goal of these programs are to see what kinds of new technologies will come out of startup scene and be a part of it if it is successful. Generally Healthcare investments would take large amounts of capital to get off the ground, but the cost to start a healthcare company has drastically gone down.
There are new healthcare conferences and places for hackers to get together and build out great ideas. There are healthcare conferences like Health 2.0, talking about how we can focus more on the patient end and the power of the developer community. There is the new conference called Data 2.0 where people are asking about what do we do with data once we have it.
Some of the smartest minds are now doing healthcare hackatons that are brining together the smartest minds in Silicon Valley, Google even supports this movement hosting hackatons at the GooglePlex.
A story, that may or may not be true but worth mentioning, Steve Jobs when in a hospital saw how bad everything was and thought up the iPad. I heard this story from someone, it might not be true, but interesting!
The world is changing and massive health innovation is happening all around you.
iPhone app downloads are heating up around the world, not just America.
Take a look at this heat map from a distmio report about downloads.
Super interesting stuff! America, Asia and Europe seem to be the biggest iPhone app users. I wonder what how many of these apps are health related?
One interesting thing to note is we have users all over the world using the drchrono iPad EHR downloading from iPads and from iPhones. Though we are focusing on the American market and getting that right, health professionals from Canada to Europe are also using our EHR in their practices!
The EHR Market is Growing Fast!
Doing research on the EHR market we found studies that say the market will be doubling in the next few years.
Looking closely at the market from a few sources we found that only 6% of healthcare practitioners are running a full paperless practice.
Drchrono’s goal is to make sure that iPads are part of the future of EHRs!
Don’t get me wrong, I love OpenEMR. I have used it in the past, it has its upsides … BUT OpenEMR is open source and not so well adopted. Running OpenEMR is a great solution if you have the time to pay a tech expert to set it up and keep it up and running. Just finding someone good enough to run it is a challenge, this is really something most doctors don’t want manage, it is a burden.
Not to mention as of late OpenEMR’s momentum is waning.
What we are doing at Drchrono is removing the burden, so you can focus on Healthcare. Using us you get the best of both worlds free, plus support. We have a dedicated team of engineers working to do upgrade after upgrade for everyone of our users.
There are other options (like PatientOS, which isn’t very good) but if you are looking for a free mobile EMR Drchrono is the right choice.
