Show HN: JuvMed – Health practice management software | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: JuvMed – Health practice management software

juvmed.com

11 pointsmariushn18 comments

As a healthcare investment banker that just sold an EHR, practice management and RCM I think it is really good. A lot of smaller doctor practices don’t have the ability to schedule online so this could be valuable for them. I would think about adding a patient facing iPad app so patients can check-in in the office and something to accept payments.

To respond to other comments, this isn’t an EHR so you probably don’t have to be HIPAA complaint.

Yeah, but there's not exactly a strong trend of more independent non-hospital affiliated practices springing up creating a huge market [1, 2].

I also sorta doubt that the practices that have a large need for EHR/RCM (i.e. anyone who takes medicare/private insurance) don't already have a EHR/RCM solution already that has this functionality built in a la athenahealth/practice fusion.

[1]. https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0130 [2]. https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/practices/healthcare-leader...

True, but there is a market. The names you mentioned are moving upstream and charging a higher price than many independent physicians are willing to spend. Those names also have a practice management tool but want you to bundle their EHR. An independent time management platform makes sense to me.

Confirming this by me having a hard time finding customers...

Thanks Chris, appreciate your insight!

Besides the functionality suggestions that you listed, how would you advise finding some customers? There's only one customer now, a small psychology clinic. I aimed at finding more in psychology, but the problem isn't a pain.

May I ask for your contact info? Mine is marius@juvmed.com -- thanks!

I had done a very similar product for lawyers and after some years I had to give up due to the too slow pace at which we were acquiring new customers. Small firms in my experience are very slow when it comes to acquire new services, even though they do need it.

Having said so, I whish you all the best because your project deserves it!

As a suggestion, try localizing the app in other languages. For example in Italy, where I'm from, you'd have a huge market. Most of the doctors work in the public health system, but they are allowed, under certain conditions, to also work privately. One of such conditions is essentially that they have to be a solo firm. So you have thousands of doctors managing their own schedules (of course they can have a secretary or other personnel).

Grazie! :)

Welcome to the Practice Management biz!

1) I'm not seeing any mention of HIPAA (or other medical privacy laws) compliance. Lack of compliance would be a non-starter for basically all medical professionals.

2) This is wildly cheap, when compared to other EHRs like AthenaHealth or Dr. Chrono. Part of that makes sense due to the reduced feature set you're offering, but something to consider.

Thanks :)

> 1) I'm not seeing any mention of HIPAA (or other medical privacy laws) compliance. Lack of compliance would be a non-starter for basically all medical professionals.

Since this is bootstrapped, I was hoping to get some customers, to be able to invest in certification. Would you see any path going forward without certification for now?

> 2) This is wildly cheap, when compared to other EHRs

I was hoping for this to be a differentiator, since this is at beginning. What would be a better alternative?

If I may be blunt, it seems to lack a TON of features any modern practicing doctor would want. A lot of doctors need the ability to do documentation for reimbursement, and I don't really see any demonstration that this was taken seriously.

Given maybe the idea is to only focus on practice management, well you're certainly then going to want to be able to integrate into major EHR vendors, and well they probably don't have any incentive to help.

As a person who has a close idea of where the current EHR market is (MS in health econ and a PhD candidate in health informatics), I'm not convinced that there's a significant marketshare that hasn't been met by EHR vendors (allscripts/athenahealth/cerner).

> A lot of doctors need the ability to do documentation for reimbursement, and I don't really see any demonstration that this was taken seriously.

Not yet. I'm trying to find some paying customers before investing more.

> you're certainly then going to want to be able to integrate into major EHR vendors, and well they probably don't have any incentive to help.

Indeed. I was aiming to evolve into an EHR itself to overcome this.

> I'm not convinced that there's a significant marketshare

Since I have a hard time finding customers, this seems right. How would to recommend to proceed to carve out a niche in this market?

I would say your primary strength right now is that you're clearly skilled in developing an aesthetically pleasing front end experience, something that EPIC and other major vendors don't do well (there's an entire PhD thesis to this, but the tldr is that the vendors primary 'selling point' is to help increase revenue from reimbursements).

The biggest opportunity area imho are clinical 'apps' using interoperability standards (HL7/FHIR). While EPIC and CERNER have a lot of functionality, they don't cover everything (like certain clinical calculators/ better visual representations of data). There are certainly unmet clinical needs from these apps, and if you're willing to put in the effort to do more background research, I'm certain you can find some of these unmet needs. It's admittedly a very different strategy that you're currently pitching, but I think it's where there is significant growth for

For further references that are useful: [1]. https://www.wired.com/2015/04/the-overdose-harm-in-a-wired-h... [2]. https://apporchard.epic.com/ [3]. https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2018/10/everything-yo... [4]. https://apps.smarthealthit.org/

Thank you! I'll look into this. Appreciate taking the time to list references.

Would this be appropriate for mental health practitioners or is it primarily for physicians?

Thanks for asking. I've started out with psychology my single customer is a psychology clinic. However, it's designed to be applicable to any practice, via dedicated modules, if needed.

How should I proceed to target physicians?

Hi thanks for responding it's a good site.

I was actually inquiring for a friend of mine who's a social worker and has a small Private practice.

I think a major issue you might encounter is HIPAA type regulations. Medical practitioners are extremely risk-averse when it comes to patient information.

I didn't see anything on the site about this.

Right. Since this is bootstrapped, I was hoping to get some customers, to be able to invest in certification. Would you see any path going forward without certification for now?

I would never give up on any project I was working on. Everything has challenges, you just need to figure out how to overcome or pivot in some way.

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