Mobile devices are not only helping clinicians access information at the point of care – they're prompting some health IT vendors to reinvent themselves.
One example is Ingenious Med, the Atlanta-based company with the cool name that launched in 1999 as a revenue cycle management vendor. Company executives realized a few years back that, while their platform focused on charge capture at the point of care, that platform was also collecting data that clinicians could use to improve outcomes and enhance the doctor-patient experience.
So they diversified.
"Point-of-care is really a big push for accuracy," says Courtney Schickel, the company’s vice president of marketing. "We started by focusing on revenue, and getting (clinicians) to change from paper slips (to charge capture). Along the way we found that we could give clinicians a lot more of the information that they needed."
So "point of care" became "quality of care." That has led Ingenious Med to rebrand itself this past year and market a patient encounter platform (PEP) that not only enables clinicians to capture revenue but gives them access to analytics and workflow tools to improve care outcomes.
"We're there at the right time and we already have a lot of the information they need," Schickel says. "Our goal was always to be in the hands of physicians."
It's not an unusual concept. Charge capture and coding tools are getting more sophisticated as the nation's healthcare system transitions from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding sets – which obviously go far beyond the old pen-and-paper method of keep track of what to charge for. Add in back-end analytics tools that can access common standards of care and even payer data, and clinicians find themselves with a mobile solution that not only enables them to get paid properly, but points out the best care plan for each patient.
In January, the company pulled in more financing, with Ascension Ventures, Heritage Group and Kaiser Permanente Ventures joining North Bridge Growth Equity – which secured a majority stake in the company last October – as investors. The prime selling point was the One by Ingenious Med (IM1) platform.
“The offerings in mobile, point-of-care solutions provided by Ingenious Med demonstrate compelling ROI and broad physician adoption across a marquee customer base,” David McClellan, managing director of Heritage Group (whose investors include Cardinal Health, Community Health Systems, Intermountain Healthcare, Memorial Hermann and Tenet Healthcare), said in a press release. Left unsaid was that the move to a patient engagement platform opened Ingenious Med to a whole new world of business relationships.
Schickel says the IM1 platform isn't meant to replace EHRs, but act as the mobile gateway for clinicians. And that's a crowded market, filled with lots of different solutions. To boost its place in the market, the company established a partnership this past December with athenahealth to expand the brand through athena's "More Disruption Please" program.
“Our patient encounter platform is a highly useable, highly adopted solution,” S. Hart Williford, Ingenious Med's president and CEO, said in a press release at that time. “We seek to increase the quality of care and lower costs through automation at the point-of-care. Partnering with athenahealth gives us greater opportunity to move the dial industry-wide.”
Ingenious Med's journey might be indicative of many mHealth innovators looking to move beyond that initial stage and become a lasting, sustainable part of the landscape. Companies that launched with one function in mind have gradually learned to accommodate other functions, either by forging partnerships or enhancing the technology.
Oh, and it helps to have a cool name, too.
