EMR Gaining Ground; Athenahealth Growing Steadily

The healthcare IT industry has been in the news lately as various medical authorities and organizations work together to define Stage 2 requirements of the Meaningful Use initiative. Under the HITECH Act, Stage 1 under the Meaningful Use initiative began in 2011 and referred to the capability of physician providers to transfer data to electronic health records (EHRs) and share information, including electronic copies and visit summaries for patients. According to the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS), 57% of office-based physicians are now using either partial or full electronic medical record (EMR) systems. >>>

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Web 3.0 and Mental Illness: Personalization

Web 3.0 and Mental Illness: Personalization

Finally, all this would be so much more manageable with a serious dose of personalization that offers both a virtual and a physical case manager. Based on the illness, location, insurance plan, family situation, patient demographics, and so on, custom solutions need to be researched and designed. A virtual case manager can easily charge $50 a month, while physical case managers charge $200–$500 a month. >>>

Web 3.0 and Mental Illness: Content, Community And Commerce

Web 3.0 and Mental Illness: Content

The content needs of the domain are immense and range all the way from content related to various illnesses, their symptoms, medications, prognosis, and state of research, to the vast spectrum of discussions and insights on coping mechanisms and support resources for family and friends. >>>

Web 3.0 and Mental Illness: Context

First, we explore context. What brings users to the web?

It could be that a family member is in the middle of a first psychosis. However, the family has no experience of the phenomenon, and hence, they do not know what the symptoms mean. They come to the web for research. >>>

Web 3.0 and Mental Illness: Introduction

This holiday season, as we play with fun topic like music, food, and dance, I also want to tackle one heavy topic: mental illness.

There has always been a stigma around mental illness. Yet, 10 percent of the U.S. population is mentally ill. And if you extrapolate from that number, it is conceivable that worldwide, 700 million people are mentally ill. These illnesses can be varied, ranging from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder to chronic depression to various addictions to developmental disorders to post-traumatic stress disorder that is so common in war veterans these days. >>>

Athenahealth Takes Leading Role In Healthcare Administration Changes

A Frost and Sullivan report, U.S. Hospital EHR Market, 2009–2016: Charting the Course for Dramatic Change, published earlier last month, reveals that the electronic health records (EHR) market is on path to grow more than six times its 2009 revenues of under a billion dollars to $6.5 billion in 2012, a clear indication that the implementation of the HITECH Act resulted in increased spending by health care providers on IT infrastructure. The researcher believes that significant change has happened since 2009, when approximately 12% of hospitals were using basic or advanced EHR, and only 2% of those were using EHRs in a way that would qualify for meaningful use. HITECH Act laid out several parameters to identify providers using their inter-operable EHR system for meaningful use of delivery of healthcare services, and offered incentives to these providers with additional payments received through Medicare and Medicaid. To help healthcare providers to benefit from these financial incentives, EHR providers are expanding their offerings.

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Outsourcing: Jason Beans, Founder and CEO of Rising Medical Solutions (Part 1)

Health care costs can be prohibitive, not only for the average citizen but for employers and insurance providers, too. Rising Medical Solutions, a Chicago, Illinois-based company, works with insurance providers to help keep health care costs down without sacrificing the quality that patients receive. Their specialities include medical bill review, hospital bill review, care management and provider negotiation, among others. >>>

Electronic Health Record Market Poised For Huge Growth

According to researchers, the U.S. electronic health records (EHR) is expected to grow to $31.9 billion in 2015 from $15.8 billion in 2010. The market grew 10.5% in 2009 and 13.6% in 2010 and is expected to grow even faster in the coming years – 18.3% in 2011 and 20.1% in 2012 according to researchers. Growth is expected to slow down in subsequent years to 15.9% in 2013, 11.2% in 2014 and 10.5% in 2015. In this post, we cover Epocrates’s entry into the EHR market, as well as take stock of WebMD’s recent performance.

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Athenahealth Catching Up On Competitors’ Market Share

A recent report by MarketResearch.com estimates the U.S. electronic medical records (EMR) market to grow 18% annually to $6.05 billion in 2015. The market was estimated to be worth $2.18 billion in 2009. The report claims that growth in the market is being fueled by the nationwide healthcare reforms and the need to control healthcare costs while improving the quality of services offered.

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WebMD And Epocrates Lead The Way In Mobile Health Apps

Manhattan Research estimates that 72% of doctors in the country currently own smartphones. This number is projected to rise to 80% by 2012. The research also estimates that among physicians, the smartphone is primarily used to look up prescription drug information at the point of patient care. The growing demand of mobile-based services is driving mobile initiatives of medical information providing companies.

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