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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Pathagility won a contract with UNC Nephropathology about 18 months ago. We were chosen because we offered a web-based reporting solution that did not require an overhaul of their existing Filemaker Pro lab system. Pathagility’s ReportPath gave them the functionality they needed without having to change LIS systems. One thing UNC Nephropathology is most pleased…
Several years ago I worked for a national lab. Our company’s individual AP labs of different sizes and specialties were sprinkled from coast to coast. The network functioned with each lab maintaining a considerable amount of autonomy and labs’ LIS systems ranged from antiquated to new and shiny and from home-brew DOS-based to the latest…
Today almost every pathology lab director has “interfacing” as a line item on their weekly staff meeting agenda. As more referring physicians implement EMR systems and ramp up their meaningful use (MU) of these technologies to grab their piece of the Federal Government’s HITECH incentive dollars, the demand for LIS-to-EMR interfacing increases. Check out a previous post describing the…
We’ve already discussed the benefits of SaaS in healthcare especially those applications that provide opportunity for customization. But are all SaaS platforms equal? No…you guessed it… they certainly are not. In choosing a SaaS platform in healthcare, there are several criteria that need to be examined. The check list should including the following at a minimum: Redundancy –…