Skeletor

That's the exact way the market looked to Salesforce.com when Seibel system only went after large markets and told their salesforce to "run" not "walk" away from smaller customers. Salesforce.com definitely killed Seibel in the enterprise space after building a better product with feedback from smaller sales forces.

For starters, drchrono offers a completely free version (in a freemium model) with the free version being a full EMR that qualifies doctors for $44,000 from Medicare in Meaningful Use incentives.

drchrono has also been building on the iPad exclusively since the iPad was first launched in April of 2010 (much longer than any other company). So drchrono on the iPad is more advanced with features like realtime speech to text, customized templates, and automatic note generation and billing features that have evolved over the last 2 years.

We are going to change healthcare from the ground-up. Small 1-10 doctor practices can easily make the decision to completely move to a new solution like drchrono. Once you get every private practice doctor using better tools, you can start banging on the gates of the hospitals to let you in and adopt new technology.

It's similar to how Salesforce.com started with small businesses and eventually broke into enterprise sales from the bottom up.

Also covered on techcrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/26/drchrono-raises-2-8m-from-y...

You are a napping genius!!!

Patient records can be given to patients in .pdf format (human readable) and also one of two government specified HL7 formats (CCR and CCD.) The MU certification makes all vendors give patients/doctors the ability to download one of the format (CCR or CCD), but all vendors have to be able to read both formats.

The MU guidelines did a great job of forcing all of the vendors to adopt one of these two standards and to understand them both.

Your fear is understandable, but I feel you would have less doubt if you knew more about the EHR space.

The government is laying out strict regulations on how EHR's should work and what data can be used (and by whom).

Access by patients to their own records is mandated as part of the certification and we already see widespread use of patients accessing their data from EHR systems via our patient portal and iPad app for patients.

The legal FUD you bring up would have some basis in fact if the government weren't mandating that all US physicians use EHR systems and passed laws/regulations defining their use and liability under HIPAA and the security rule.

The #1 source of patient data theft has occurred from stolen laptops which contained locally stored records. A cloud based solution with mobile access is much more secure since even if an iPad is stolen there is no loss of data.

Evernote primarily makes money from paying customers (by charging paying customers. I don't think they give money to their customers.

That worked! Thanks! +1 for you!

One aspect of getting government certification is that all vendors are required to support government approved standards like HL7/CCR/CCD for the exchange of health information.

So forcing all vendors in the space to get certified has forced all of us healthcare IT vendors to cooperate and adopt a fixed set of standards for exchange of data. Without the government stepping in and forcing vendors to adopt these standards, the disparate vendors would never have agreed on any standards and followed them.

drchrono runs on the iPad and on the cloud backend of drchrono.com. So drchrono can and does integrate with other vendors and systems to share data and take actions. For instance we transmit billing data to insurance companies and order electronic prescriptions over the Surescripts network.

Yes, companies that sell data about their doctors and patients are doing something dishonest in my view and we will never do it.

All of these questions are answered in our privacy policy public pages. I could just tell people to RTFM, but doctors and potential customers often appreciate conversations that can address their specific concerns.

I'd love to talk with you offline about drchrono to go through all of your issues in detail. You can email support@drchrono.com to get a 1-1 conversation.

For security and data issues the government Meaningful Use guidelines have very specific security and encryption standards we follow and are getting certified by a 3rd party government approved lab.

drchrono is a professional service for doctors and we only generate revenue by having doctors pay us for premium services (e-prescribing, medical billing, clinical realtime speech to text.) So we never sell any data (even anonymized data) to any 3rd party like some other companies do.

My Mom always told me a glass of milk would help me sleep better. It isn't scientific, but if I'm stressed out and have a glass of milk before bed I'll relax more and sleep better.

One legged standing could be just a good! I'll definitely try it out.

Ghostbusters on C64 was the best game ever. If Lion won't support it, I just won't upgrade.

I have the most respect for #10. It boggles my mind how you can become a billionaire from eggs (not sold on the internet.)

drchrono started working in the medical billing space 2.5 years ago, the surprising thing is that all of this information is already out there. Medical billing condition/procedure codes that are electronically reported by 90% of doctor's offices already disclose all of this information across secure channels to insurance companies and government payers.

drchrono takes security really seriously! The Doctor is our only customer and we always use encryption and security standards to make sure no data is ever compromised and never shared with any 3rd party.

Healthcare information is even more important to keep private than financial information. If you were bankrupt 5 years ago, nobody cares (you could be a millionaire today.) But if you had a serious medical condition 5 years ago, that still affects you for the rest of your life and could be used to unfairly discriminate against a patient.)

In addition to following HIPAA standards, we are in the process of getting certified for Meaningful Use criteria by a 3rd party government certified laboratory for security and encryption standards.

Before the iPad, the "state of the art" touchscreen was an 11 pound laptop with 2 hours of battery life and a reversible top-cover/"touch" screen that required a stylus to use. The iPad is a REVOLUTION in tablet computing for physicians.

iPad's are better for interacting with patients because they force the applications to require less typing. Laptops and keyboards engross users more than touch screens. (Imagine someone using an iPad vs. a laptop even in a social setting like watching TV or having a cup of coffee.) Doctors looking at paper charts are fast becoming an anachronism and the government policies are speeding this along.

drchrono takes security really seriously! The Doctor is our only customer and we always use encryption and security standards to make sure no data is ever compromised and never shared with any 3rd party. Healthcare information is even more important to keep private than financial information.

In addition to following HIPAA standards, we are in the process of getting certified for Meaningful Use criteria by a 3rd party government certified laboratory for security and encryption standards.

All of the data put into drchrono belongs 100% to the physician! We host and secure the data for the doctor and can provide encrypted backup files with all of the doctors information for their own use and backups.

We are licensing our clinical data (like the list of drug-drug interactions) from industry leading data companies (the same ones that all vendors in the healthcare space are using.) There is very little difference across vendors in this regard (the challenge lies in presenting this information to doctors conveniently and providing an integrated solution so the tools are with the doctor when they need them.)

We actually have a quote from Jay Parkinson about us on our homepage! Constantly improving the application (including the UI) is our company's mantra.

Please email support@drchrono.com and someone can help you with that issue right away! We have an amazing support team ready to help!

We are very close to launching an integrated clinical speech to text product in our iPad application that should remove the need for most typing!

Speech to text is one cool feature we are integrating now, but is still just one feature.

Hospitals and doctor offices are two completely different markets with very different needs and scales. Speech to text doesn't address managing a doctors appointment book, communicating with patients, giving drug-drug interaction checking, etc.

You bring up a really good point. Moving to electronic systems has both huge benefits and some risks that have to be mitigated.

An example of a huge electronic benefit you can't get on paper charts is drug interactions. drchrono can automatically check drug interactions and warn the Doctor in realtime based on latest available clinical information and drug warnings. My parents take 20+ prescription and non-prescription drugs each, there is no way even a genius Physician would be able to process that number of associations at first glance of a paper chart.

The risk of misentered information being accepted as factual because the computer presents all information in the same way is a very real risk that has to be addressed and have safety nets put in place to scrub and check for these errors. One cool way we are tackling this problem is launching an industry leading speech to text processing system in the coming weeks. Letting Doctors record their notes and have an automated transcription can give a safety net for errors.

Hospitals and private practice healthcare offices are two entirely different worlds. In a small healthcare practice the doctor will be paying each staff member as an employee.

Several clinical studies have shown that patients will have better healthcare outcomes if their doctors make eye contact with them. One of the reasons I co-founded drchrono was because I went to a lot of doctor visits with my Father when he was ill and sat through countless appointments where the doctor spent 10 minutes talking to us over their shoulder.

Computers are always an afterthought in most Doctor office setups, that is why they seem to be universally built into walls or tucked away into corners.

Most US private practice healthcare providers (roughly 80%) practice in small groups of 1-5 physicians. That is our target market and still the way that the majority of personal healthcare is delivered in the US!

There is a multi-billion dollar per year market in selling EHR services to the private practice doctors we all see everyday.

Large hospital level systems are designed for hospital admins 1st, doctors 2nd; they are widely hated even in hospitals and unusable in a small practice.

We are launching a speech to text integrated product in the coming few weeks that will remove the need for most typing on the iPad.

Wait, interface builder isn't supposed to explode when you use it?

We are releasing a new version of our iPad application roughly once a month and we are always working on making it better. I think we have a better UI than any other medical company out there, but that isn't hard! It is like playing basketball against Junior High School kids.

If you know a designer who could help us email me and put me in touch with them as we are rapidly expanding the company!