Athenahealth files for $86M IPO

Athenahealth, a Watertown, Mass., maker of health IT systems for billing and management of electronic health records, filed to raise as much as $86.25 million in an initial offering. The company’s SEC filing is here.

Athenahealth’s systems work as Web-based services, a strategy designed to take advantage of the Internet’s flexibility and to make it easier for doctors to digitize their practices without making a huge amount of up-front investment. That said, Athenahealth’s business is still… Continue Reading

HealthCare.com joins the online-healthcare stampede, raises $6.1M

HealthCare.com joins the online-healthcare stampede, raises $6.1M

(UPDATED with additional information on the fundraising, venture interest in the online healthcare-info sector, and a note of caution about these new ventures.)

You can’t swing a dead cat among venture businesses these days without hitting a new online site devoted to healthcare information of one sort or another. Over the last few months, we’ve seen a parade of major announcements — many of them big on vision but vague on particulars — from the likes of… Continue Reading

Andy Grove’s placebo pill for U.S. healthcare

Andy Grove’s placebo pill for U.S. healthcare

Having survived prostate cancer and now facing a mild form of Parkinson’s disease, former Intel chairman Andy Grove has turned his analytical eye on the increasingly dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system.

Unfortunately, his recommendations are disappointingly small-scale and reflective of the inordinate faith that many high-tech aficionados place in technological “fixes” for complex social phenomena. I’ll explain why in a moment.

To Grove’s tremendous credit, he argues in a recent interview with Wired News that the most pressing… Continue Reading