This Week’s Health IT Business News

The health IT industry’s biggest event is less than a month away. The HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition will be held in New Orleans, March 3 – 7 and draw upwards of 50,000 attendees. By the looks of the exhibitor list, the vendor community will once again be well represented. For start up companies attending or exhibiting, HIMSS has released the companies participating in the Angel Venture Fair. The Fair is actually comprised of two separate sessions; a Health IT Angel Venture Fair and a Health IT Venture Fair & Strategic Partner Forum.  HIMSS bills the Fair as a place to meet the “who’s who” of rising health IT startups as well as an opportunity to network with the health IT investment community. Check it out.

Mergers, Acquisitions and Investment

The Advisory Board, a healthcare research, technology and consulting firm, continues its buying strategy, acquiring Palo Alto-based clinical analytics provider 360Fresh. 360Fresh is the latest small technology company acquired by the Advisory Board as it continues to expand its hospital-based suite of services. According to its company website, 360Fresh “transforms large medical records data into actionable knowledge for improving patient quality while actively reducing costs and improving productivity.”

Contracts Awarded

Natural language processing vendor M*Modal announced it will provide its M*Modal Fluency for Coding workflow platform to Mercy Health System. The new agreement enables M*Modal to deliver Fluency for Coding across Mercy’s entire network of 26 hospitals and associated clinics.

Product Development

Notable Solutions, a provider of paper and electronic data capture and print stream management solutions, announced it has successfully completed interoperability testing at the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) North American 2013 Connectathon. During the weeklong event held in Chicago, NSi successfully passed 100 percent of its HL7 C-CDA based exchanges and demonstrated interoperability with leading Electronic Health Record (EHR) applications from industry vendors. The IHE North American Connectathon provides interoperability and connectivity testing of health information systems in an effort to improve patient care by promoting the adoption of industry standards among healthcare IT vendors and users.

Patient engagement continues to make business news as eClinicalWorks announced this week plans to launch a new initiative to enhance and expand patient engagement tools. The company will invest $25 million in its Health & Online Wellness (healow™) business unit and expects the first product launch of a free mobile app to be available later this month. According to the company press release the healow app will directly connects patients to their own and family electronic health records (EHRs),], giving immediate access to personal health information and providing two-way communications between providers and patients. The healow platform also allows providers to create compliance and wellness campaigns to further engage patients and build on the five million plus messages going out monthly through text, voice and e-mail.

Company Announcements

Chicago healthcare information technology (HIT) company EMRapproved announced this week the expansion of its network with HIT-industry partners employment portal HealthcareITCentral.com, security experts Semel Consulting and us. HITECH Answers will be one the company’s new partners offering expertise to expand and enhance the EMRapproved resource offerings. Our specific role will be content-driven, starting with a new HIT Answers column.

Nuance announced its first quarter earnings for its healthcare solutions division. First quarter fiscal 2013 non-GAAP revenue was $217.4 million, up 49.6% from the first quarter of fiscal 2012.

SuccessEHS, a health information technology vendor announced that the company has doubled in size since January 2011. The Birmingham-based company hired 165 new employees in 2011 and nearly 130 new employees in 2012. The company expects growth to continue in 2013 with future hires supporting its expanding revenue cycle management business.

Central Illinois Health Information Exchange (CIHIE) and ICA, a leading provider of interoperability technology enabling care coordination and health information exchange announced that CIHIE’s largest integrated delivery network participant, OSF HealthCare System (OSF), is operational with a cross community access (XCA) connection to the OSF EHR system, Epic. The technology will allow the sharing and exchange of clinical information throughout the seven Illinois OSF hospitals and with other CIHIE participants.

Greenway Medical announced the additional certification of one of its Greenway PrimeSUITE 2014 products, bringing the total number of ONC 2014 Edition certifications to 37.  The latest product was certified as an EHR Module by CCHIT. “We view this certification as validating Greenway’s lead position among EHR providers dedicated to furthering the transition to value-based healthcare under meaningful use Stage 2,” said Johnathan Samples, EVP of research and development. “Greenway is now certified for all ONC 2014 Edition criteria available to us at this time, and we will continue to work as rapidly as possible toward full certification.”

EHR vendor athenahealth announced financial and operational results for Q4 and full year 2012. Total revenue for the three months ended December 31, 2012, was $116.3 million, compared to $92.5 million in the same period last year, an increase of 26%. Full year 2012 revenue was $422.3 million, compared to full year 2011 revenue of $324.1 million, an increase of 30%. “2012 was a pivotal year for athenahealth. We delivered strong top and bottom line performance and made marked progress on our mission to be medical care givers’ most trusted service,” said company Chairman and CEO, Jonathan Bush.

Navicure, an Internet-based medical claims clearinghouse for physician practices, announced it will have its exclusive partnership with the MGMA AdminiServe Partner Network extended through 2015. The agreement provides MGMA members with preferred pricing of the Navicure’s Web-based claims management technology.

Personnel

Deborah Green, the former CIO at LaVie Care, has been named EVP and COO at the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). John Haughhom, former Sr. VP at PeaceHealth has been named CMO of Health Catalyist, a healthcare data and analytics firm.