Our collective heads have been turned by gutsy start-up Iconic Health ("Data Visualization to Reduce Medication Errors"), and here we query Dr. Jason Cafer:1. IH lives in this market opportunity, from your website: "At least 1.5 million Americans are harmed each year by avoidable medication errors. The extra medical costs of treating medication-related injuries occurring in hospitals alone is estimated to be $3.5 billion a year." Tell us more?
ANSWER: As a physician, I know it is difficult to manage patients taking 10 or more medications. It is impossible for me to know the doses and interactions between an ever-expanding 1000's of prescription medications. In the time allowed for clinic visits, there is rarely enough time to understand the patient's experience with each of their medications - How often do they miss doses? What side effects are they experiencing? Which medications do they feel are helping them?
I designed Medication IconoGraphs to help doctors understand these things within seconds.
2. What is an IconoGraph?
ANSWER: An IconoGraph is a data-dense combination of symbolic information, including the image of the pill, which conveys essentially everything a doctor needs to know about a patient's medication regimen in seconds. Examples of that information include dose strength (e.g., Is this a low dose or high dose?), patient-specific information (e.g., How long has the patient been taking it?), drug interactions (e.g., Does Medication A decrease the effectiveness of Medication B?), and many others.
3. What's the value prop behind it?ANSWER: Doctors will be able to manage patients' medications more efficiently and effectively. Electronic medical record (EMR) vendors can stand out from the pack in a highly competitive multi-billion dollar industry where all of the EMR products look basically the same. There is nothing in the Health IT industry that remotely resemble Medication IconoGraphs in form or functionality.
4. How will you monetize IconoGraphs?
ANSWER: They are one part of an advanced graphic data visualization "doctor interface" we're building as part of a health IT system specialized for psychiatry. Have a look at a demo of the current product, called HomePsych, at homepsych.tv. Through our system, patients schedule for psychiatry visits online, and connect with the psychiatrist online secure videoconference with web cams. This is the perfect environment for patients to complete pre-visit questionnaires which are graphically displayed for the psychiatrist. Beyond psychiatry, we hope to license them for use in EMRs, Personal Health Records, e-prescription services and Health 2.0 online services.
5. What is your partnering strategy-- and what types of firms are the ideal partners, and what value would they extract from a relationship with IH?
ANSWER: Iconic Health is working with a number of organizations, both in the private and public sector, which have shown an interest in our products. Our partners recognize that much of the health care crisis can be solved by smarter and more practical data management -- that IconoGraphs have the potential to allow doctors to understand their patients on an entirely new level, which making doctors' jobs easier.
Our current partnerships are focused on commercialization of HomePsych (prior to integration of IconoGraphs). We'd like to partner with EMR and ePrescribing companies, or a partner who could assist with licensing IconoGraphs for use in third party health IT systems.
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