Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

This is a guest post by investor Robert Abbott

In a field where handwriting notes on paper charts and managing large rooms filled with filing cabinets have been the accepted practices for decades, healthcare providers are being deluged by a perfect storm.

Not only do they have to grapple with implementing new technology and converting paper files to digital format, they are simultaneously dealing with how to secure this growing cache of electronic data while complying with complex corporate governance policies and federal mandates.

Despite these challenges, healthcare providers are finding a silver lining in secure cloud services that help them address the key technology, regulatory and privacy issues they face.

The market and legislated demands created by 900,000 healthcare providers migrating to electronic records has resulted in a $25 billion healthcare IT market, which is expected to grow more than 24 during 2012-2014, according to global market research company RNCOS.

But because healthcare is about a decade behind other industries in the adoption of IT technologies, this perfect storm is giving healthcare companies a chance to leapfrog into cloud-based solutions designed to solve their unique needs.

Cloud adoption is still in its infancy in healthcare with early adopters representing only about four percent of the market. However, there is great potential for cloud technology. According to a report from research firm Markets and Markets, the cloud computing market in healthcare is estimated to grow at 20.5 percent from 2012 to 2017. [At VentureBeat's CloudBeat conference, which begins tomorrow, healthcare is going to be a major theme; providers will discuss how they're adopting the cloud, and healthcare companies will explain how it's also helping them use novel "big data" strategies.]

Given these growth prospects, there is a sweet spot in this market for cloud service providers that can effectively combine IT expertise and experience dealing with the unique privacy, security and compliance demands of the healthcare market.

Of particular interest are cloud providers that offer automated solutions to replace traditional paper-based processes, enable better connectivity and communications between patients and their providers, and that support the entire healthcare supply chain.

Some of the leading cloud providers in healthcare today include CareCloud, ClearDATA Networks Inc., athenahealth, ADP AdvancedMD, PracticeFusion, RemitDATA, and TeraMedica Inc. For example, Baptist Health South Florida, the largest not-for-profit healthcare organization in the region, recently announced it is subsidizing CareCloud’s integrated electronic health record and practice management solution to more than 2,500 community-based physicians to improve patient care. While ClearDATA, for example, is providing its HealthDATA Cloud Platform to Dignity Health, the fifth largest hospital provider in the nation and the largest hospital system in California.

“By moving various healthcare infrastructure and applications to ClearDATA’s cloud platform, Dignity Health has been able to reduce its IT costs while increasing security and efficiency and greatly decreasing the time it takes to deploy a solution,” said Darin Brannan, ClearDATA’s president and CEO. “We also improve reliability – in terms of uptime and redundancy – and our state-of-the-art cloud systems provide greater performance over legacy hardware and networking architectures, which is typically not well-suited for the hospital’s growing data requirements.”

During CloudBeat 2012, on Nov. 28 at 10:15 a.m., Brannan and Scott Whyte, Dignity Health’s vice president of IT Connectivity, will join VentureBeat Executive Editor Dylan Tweney to talk in more depth about the challenges that healthcare companies face in their transition to electronic medical records and new IT solutions, and what they need to consider when adopting a cloud solution. During the session, they’ll also share more details about how Dignity Health has employed ClearDATA’s innovative solutions to strategically upgrade select components of its IT infrastructure, prepare for personalized care models, comply with mandates and ensure the security and privacy of patients’ electronic records. 

Robert Abbott is a general partner at Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), where he focuses on a wide variety of investment categories including mobile, cloud and IT infrastructure. NVP is an investor in ClearDATA and CareCloud. 

Navigating the storm image // Shutterstock

The experience of waiting in line at your chaotic, paper-strewn doctor’s office may be a thing of the past.

Hello Health, the electronic health record provider popular with independent and local physicians, has pulled in $11.5 million in venture funding.

Around the world, doctors are shifting from paper documentation to electronic medical records. “The practice of medicine hasn’t changed much for me over my career. The business has,” said Hello Health user Dr Richard Goldberg, a New York-based family practice physician.

When Dr. Goldberg opted to get “computerized and have everything run smoothly,” he was won over by Hello Health, which wouldn’t require his practice to pay any up-front fees. In fact, the company claimed that in the long term, it wouldn’t cost him anything at all.

Hello Health works a little differently than most ERP providers. Doctors do not pay for the service; patients do. In fact, medical practices might even make extra cash by charging patients to access Hello Health’s services (like secure instant messaging). Hello Health charges patients around $5 per month for its opt-in services; the startup makes money by taking a cut, and the rest is given back to the doctors.

Electronic health record (EHR) software is particularly appealing for doctors as it reduces the time that is typically spent on paperwork, and makes them more available to patients. Hello Health, a New York-based subsidiary of Myca Health in Quebec, Canada, also offers billing and accounting software and a secure system for prescription requests to be processed online.

To succeed, Hello Health will compete with companies like Practice Fusion, which also offers scheduling, charting, and billing online services and which makes money through advertising rather than fees.

“Independent physicians are beginning to test alternative business models,” said Ian Ihnatowycz, president and chief executive officer of First Generation Capital, in a statement. “Research estimates one in three independent physicians will aim for higher yields by adopting subscription-based care models, and this trend will increase 100 percent annually for the next three years.”

Hello Health has pulled in a total of $21.5 million in VC money in the previous year. This round of funding was led by First Generation Capital.

Healthcare and the cloud is a major topic of discussion at CloudBeat. A panel of experts will gather to debate ways to improve security for cloud-based systems, and how digital services can bring benefits to both doctors and patients. Read more here about breaches of patient’s health records.

Top doctor image // Shutterstock 

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HealthBeat 2013 is a new conference showcasing how technology is transforming health care. We'll explore how IT is driving out inefficiencies on the hospital, practice, and patient levels. Check out full event details here, and register here.

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Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In the past three years, 21 million people had their sensitive health records hacked in breaches that were significant enough to be reported to the federal government.

The actual number is likely far higher; millions of smaller hacks likely went un-reporrted. The Office for Civil Rights reported that (the “OCR”), from 2009, 477 breaches affecting 500 people or more were reported. In total, the health records of 20,970,222 people were breached, according to the OCR’s website.

At CloudBeat, we’ll be debating this in several ways. First, a panel of healthcare-technology experts will gather discuss ways to improve security for cloud-based systems. In this sector, there are still significant questions and concerns: Cloud security, cloud encryption and HIPAA requirements regularly top the list.

In the past, the most sensitive records were stored on film, tape and paper charts. As data gets digitized, hospitals, physician practice groups, software and hardware companies, consulting firms and affiliated health care organizations are grappling with how to keep it secure.

Second, we’ll be inviting the major healthcare record and billing company, McKesson, to discuss how that $22 billion company is applying new big data initiatives to its data, using things like SAP’s Hana in-memory database platform in the cloud.

(CloudBeat is unique with its emphasis on customer case-studies. It’s not abstract theories and ideas — executives will reveal their hard-frought solutions to very real technology problems.)

Get it this right, and the opportunity is enormous: market and legislated demand has created $35 billion health IT market which is growing at a rate of 20% year-on-year. In the U.S. alone, approximately 900,000 healthcare providers are migrating electronic health records.

So join us for the panel to learn how Scott Whyte, Vice President of IT Connectivity at Dignity Health, the fifth largest hospital provider in the nation and the largest hospital system in California, is addressing the “perfect storm” of challenges facing today’s healthcare providers and how they are using cloud computing to help solve these technical issues.

The audience will learn about Dignity Health’s journey toward HIPPA-compliant cloud infrastructure technologies in order to meet the growing needs of hospitals and healthcare delivery partners across the country — as well as the cost savings associated with this technology leap to the cloud.

Whyte will be joined by Darin Brannan, president and CEO of ClearDATA, who will address the key technology, regulatory and privacy issues facing the various constituents in the healthcare supply chain. The panel will be moderated by VentureBeat’s own executive editor, Dylan Tweney.

In the McKesson case, we’ll discuss how its big data initiatives are letting it process its ERP and financials faster than ever before, allowing it to analyze this data realtime to track which of their customers are profitable and which ones aren’t, and to make recommendations on how to make them more profitable. The session will be moderated by VentureBeat editor-in-chief, Matt Marshall

Healthcare is a hot topic: as the market matures, more mainstream cloud providers will introduce solutions specifically designed for this vertical.

Top image via Shutterstock