Waves of Disruption – Healthcare & Cloud Computing

I came across a great blog called Cloud Computing’s Stormy Future this morning by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown.  John and John are co-chairmen of the Deloitte LLP Center for the Edge, and have written several books focused on technology and innovation.  Their post talks about the disruptive potential of cloud computing and outlines four distinctive,…

Save your Lab’s Brand 2

In a previous post, we talked about one way a pathology lab can protect its brand – the lab report.  For a quick refresher, compare these two reports… If these reports represent two competing labs, what perceptions would you have for each based on these reports?  Now, with that point made, labs are not in…

Lab plays big role in EHR adoption

At least 70% of data in the EMR originates in the lab.  Several sources can be sited with this interesting statistic.  We see articles, blog posts, and tweets daily about how EHR adoption is increasing and going to continue to build steam.  I don’t believe you can overstate the importance of the lab in this tidal…

Path lab volume up – efficiency needed

The article Good News for Anatomic Pathology Laboratories: Tissue-Based Diagnostics Market Predicted to Double by 2016 published this morning by Dark Daily, is another indicator that the Anatomic Pathology market is going to see increased volumes.  Couple this with health care reform that may have an adverse affect on lab reimbursements, EFFICIENCY will be key in surviving and thriving during this…

Recent Digital Pathology Acquisition

A couple of weeks ago, it was announced  that Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. (a member of the Roche Group) would acquire BioImagene for $100+ Million.  BioImagene is a leader in the field of digital pathology and workflow analysis.  Earlier this year, we had the opportunity to visit for a few minutes with some members of the BioImagene team including…

Faxing still a reality in the EMR era.

Even though the movement of health data is becoming more digitized and shared electronically, one of the main distribution channels for lab results is still the classic faxsimile.  The reality for many labs is that this is how most lab results are communicated to referring physicians.  Conversations with pathology labs around the country reveal issues with faxing reports,…

Enemies & Friends

We discussed “partnering with your competition” in a post a few months ago and thought it made sense to follow up on the topic after moving further down this path ourselves.  We (Pathagility) serve pathology laboratories and their healthcare partners (referring physicians, hospitals, etc.) with our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.  A lot is going on in this market.  As our…

When you’ve outgrown FileMaker Pro

FileMaker Pro is an easy to use, flexible database tool that is quite popular in the pathology laboratory world.  Many database applications (laboratory information systems or LIS) for this market have been developed due to cost factors and ease of deployment especially if the lab has limited IT resources.  FileMaker Pro will continue to be popular for sometime with smaller volume…

Simplicity of HL7

Came across this post and video about how HL7 works on Twitter by @HL7 and really enjoyed the simplicity of it.  What’s interesting though is that HL7 doesn’t seem to be simple at all.  Please know I’m not saying HL7 isn’t a good thing, because standardization can add to progression.  Also, I’m a business guy and need to leave the details to…

EHR Progress?

There is an abundance of focus and energy around the shift to digitizing healthcare.  The government may be the biggest cheerleader and/or bank roller.  Last week, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT posted on its Health IT Buzz Blog a new theme of unity in healthcare emphasizing the fact that it is going to be a huge…