Drchrono is a New York born, San Francisco/YCombinator bred startup. The first version of its app was just an appointment reminder system for patients. Then the company built a medical billing engine which hooked into all of the insurance companies. In March of this year, we wrote about how drchrono is building a health care revolution on the iPad.
Daniel Kivatinos and his co-founder Michael Nusimow, the CEO of drchrono are both software developers and hackers who met in college. In elevator pitch lingo, “Drchrono addresses the complexities and critical needs of today’s healthcare environment by providing a multi point solution, mobile health point-of-care apps plus access to our cloud web based Electronic Health Record platform.”
They founded the company in January 2009 and released their feature product- the drchrono iPad app for doctors one week after Apple started selling them last spring. The iPad is a perfect device for doctors, in fact it almost looks like a clipboard. Paul Graham, of YC fame and Bayesian spam filters has called drchrono “the SAP for doctors.”
Today, drchrono is announcing that its free iPad app has received official certification that will allow doctors to receive up to $44,000 in government assistance in exchange for using the app as an electronic medical records platform. This certification establishes drchrono as the first native EHR on the iPad to be certified for ‘Meaningful Use.’ Through the HITECH Act, the government allocated $19.2 billion dollars to help move U.S. doctors to electronic medical record systems.
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“The government is incentivizing doctors to go digital and the iPad is a natural fit in the medical space. It was a thrilling experience to be the first company to use an iPad during the Meaningful Use certification process,” added Daniel Kivatinos, Cofounder and COO of drchrono.
Through this initiative, the federal government hopes to save more than $12 billion over the next 10 years while the RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank, estimates savings of about $80 billion a year for the healthcare sector when they move towards paperless medical records.
Imagine you’re hurt while skiing in Colorado, doctors should be able to pull up your medical records and browse through your medical history immediately, reading what you’re allergic to and a list of previous injuries. It should work as seamlessly as banking systems talking to each other, but it doesn’t. The advantages of electronic medical records, aside from the savings, include reduced redundant care, speedier patient treatment, improved safety and healthier patients overall.
The drchrono iPad app includes:
- Real time clinical speech-to-text on the iPad
- Custom workflows and the ability to integrate photos and videos into a patient chart
- Integrated electronic medical billing
- Electronic prescribing to send prescriptions to any pharmacy in the U.S.
- A streamlined user interface that allow doctors to complete their clinical notes before the patient leaves the exam room
Know any on-the-go, iPad owning doctors who want to cash in on an extra $44,000 from the government over the next 5 years? Tell them to download the free app here. Apple must be LOVING this.
Other startups that are building electronic health record systems (EHRs) as platforms to support app stores, include HealthForge, an open source EHR platform, Boundary Medical, Phytel, and emerge.md. Also other notable efforts to revolutionize health care through technology include Aza Raskin’s Massive Health and Dr. Jay Parkinson’s Hello Health.
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