This Week’s Health IT Business News
Today my family celebrates the fifth holiday of the year. Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, July 4th, and Sunday at the Masters. Today’s final round will most likely see a winner from the U.S. or from a country south of the equator. No Australian has ever won the Masters, though several have come close, most notably Greg Norman’s “always the bridesmaid” loss to Nick Faldo in 1996 when he shot a 78 on the final day. Angel Cabrera from Argentina, on the other hand, won golf’s most illustrious event in 2009. He tees off tied for the tournament today with Brandt Snedeker. And what about Greenway’s sponsored player, Jason Dufner? Dufner sits at even par going into today’s final round and has virtually no chance of winning. If Dufner makes a great shot here and there or shoots a terrific score we’re likely to see a health IT vendor logo on display.
Funding
Social media platform developer WellTok announced the company has closed $18.7M in Series B funding with investments from Emergence Capital Partners, InterWest Partners and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). The company plans to use the funding to accelerate product development and expand into new markets.
Product Development
Health IT vendor and developer SuccessEHS, and medical diagnostic company Welch Allyn announced this week the companies have integrated four Welch Allyn devices with the SuccessEHS 6.1 EHR and PM solution. According to the news release, the incorporation of these four Welch Allyn devices with SuccessEHS 6.1 “enables seamless data collection by delivering patient data directly into the patient’s electronic chart. This integration will allow clients to improve performance by streamlining workflows, increasing productivity, reducing risk of error and eliminating manual documentation required to meet Meaningful Use.”
EHR vendor athenahealth announced the company is working with Mashery to provide new web-services-based APIs for the health care IT developer community. These new offerings “strengthen partner access to athenahealth’s More Disruption Please (MDP) program, an initiative that brings together entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, developers, academics, and others who believe in breeding innovation and stoking disruption as a means to overcome the staid and broken processes within health care.”
Health IT consulting firm CTG Health Solutions announced it will provide integration services for HealthEdge’s business intelligence platform for health care payers. Michael Colson, CTG Senior Vice President, IT Solutions commented, “HealthEdge is emerging as the premier provider of next-generation claims and benefits administration technology for healthcare payors. Our integration services enable HealthRules Answers users to turn their transactional data into actionable business intelligence that will significantly enhance analytics reporting, lower administrative costs, improve outcomes, and help them compete more effectively in the rapidly changing healthcare environment.”
Contracts
GroupOne Health Source consulting and billing firm, has been selected by Tidewater Orthopaedic Associates to implement the eClinicalWorks (eCW) electronic health records system for its approximately 25 affiliated healthcare providers.
iMedicor announced that it had been chosen by iHealthTrust, a Houston-based Federally funded Health Information Exchange (HIE) serving a market of some 12,000 physicians and hospitals in the Houston and Gulf coast regions, to provide them with secure communications services via the iMedicor SocialHIE platform.
Company Announcements
DataMotion, a health information service provider (HISP) offering secure data delivery services, announced it has officially joined DirectTrust, an independent non-profit trade association created by and for participants in the Direct secure messaging community. One of the earliest supporters of DirectTrust, DataMotion is actively involved in efforts aimed at driving the Direct messaging initiative spearheaded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
Personnel
James Schlueter, President of Effective Health Systems, announced the appointment of Scott Hethcox of Nashville, TN as the company’s Vice President for Business Development. “Scott will be leading our efforts acquire new business on a national and regional level. His primary focus will be on the workers’ compensation payer market; however, we will also be exploring other markets as well.” Timothy Elwell, former vice president at Misys Open Source Solutions, has been named CEO of Qualidigm, a provider of health care consulting and health IT services. Ping Zhang, former senior vice president of research and development at Epocrates, a developer of mobile and cloud-based point-of-care medical applications, has been named senior vice president of product innovation and CTO at MedeAnalytics, a provider of health care performance management systems.