San Diego, CA-based SafeMed has provided Google Health with one element of its Analysis Engine, which delivers advanced clinical decision support and enables personalized safety checks and quality of care analyses in real time. It...
"... instantly personalizes, prioritizes, and identifies treatment options to help doctors and patients make better medical decisions. The software analyzes an individual’s medical profile and prioritizes answers by ranking and scoring treatments against established health guidelines in seconds. As a result, the safest, most effective, and most affordable treatment options are identified in real-time."
SafeMed was founded in 2000. Here we interview SafeMed CEO Richard Noffsinger:
1) SafeMed was founded in 2000 -- can you discuss your history-to-date, and how you are funded?
SafeMed was started in 2000 by Dr. Ahmed Ghouri and a group of other physicians who provided angel funding. Initial investors included dozens of doctors and entrepreneurs who all shared SafeMed’s goal of improving patient care. The SafeMed Analysis Engine was built over five years of research and development at three leading medical schools (Washington University, Harvard University, and St. Louis University). Our initial partners included Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and several Electronic Medical Record systems, and we began collaborating with Google in 2006. In 2007, Hicks Holdings, a private equity firm in Dallas, made a meaningful investment and later that year, Richard Noffsinger was appointed as SafeMed’s Chief Executive Officer. In February 2008, John D. Halamka, M.D., M.S. joined the SafeMed Board of Directors.
2) How does the SafeMed Analysis Engine work? And how will you generate revenue?
SafeMed provides healthcare’s leading analytical software that, for the first time, instantly personalizes, prioritizes, and identifies treatment options to help doctors and patients make better medical decisions. The software analyzes an individual’s medical profile and prioritizes options by ranking and scoring treatments against established health guidelines in seconds. As a result, the safest, most effective, and most affordable treatment options can be identified quickly and easily.
The SafeMed Analysis Engine’s software architecture is based on cloud computing. Additionally, it employs an XML Web services transaction model that is easily deployed in a hosted or distributed data center. The SafeMed Analysis Engine is easily integrated into almost any clinical application workflow, requiring minimal IT support to install and maintain.
Leading healthcare Web sites, insurers, doctors, and electronic medical record systems use SafeMed for next-generation Clinical Decision Support (CDS). Monetization will vary depending on the market and the components that are utilized.
3) What problem does the SafeMed Analysis Engine solve?
According to the U.S. Institute of Medicine, more than 770,000 people are injured or die each year in America due to medical errors. Many of these could be prevented by intelligent systems that check for drug interactions, dangerous side effects, and gaps in care. The SafeMed Analysis Engine provides a foundation for better informed clinical decisions, transforming the practice of medicine and improving the economics of healthcare.
• Physicians benefit from accurate and comprehensive information on therapeutic alternatives, reduced medical errors, improved operating efficiencies, and the potential for increased revenue through payer pay-for-performance (P4P) programs.
• Payers and large self-insured companies benefit from empowering their members and employees with information that allows them to improve quality, reduce costs, help manage illness, and comply with evidence-based guidelines.
• Patients benefit from the knowledge that their health is better safeguarded while their healthcare costs are simultaneously reduced. Patients using SafeMed are empowered to take control of their health by being able to conduct meaningful safety, quality of care, and financial comparisons for the first time.
• The entire healthcare ecosystem benefits from the facilitation of cross-data vendor interoperability. The SafeMed Analysis Engine facilitates the exchange of information across multiple environments (insurer/PBM, pharmacies, lab vendors, imaging centers, PHR, EMR, CPOE, etc.), providing a holistic view of a patient’s health record. This enables healthcare professionals to make better informed decisions at the point of care and point of ordering, helping to reduce unnecessary medical errors.
4) What was the impetus for your Google Health partnership, and how is it structured?
SafeMed has partnered with Google to provide a component of its Analysis Engine for Google Health. Every time a user enters new health data into his or her Google Health profile, Google checks for potential interactions between drugs, allergies, and conditions using the SafeMed Analysis Engine.
With the SafeMed Analysis Engine, Google Health users can instantly obtain health feedback based on their individual medical profiles. Armed with insights that are personal and actionable, users will be more prepared to talk with their doctors and more empowered to take better control of their health.
5) What is the rest of your partnering strategy to date, and how might it change going forward?
SafeMed will continue to develop meaningful relationships with leading companies that offer a variety of strategic healthcare technology solutions, clinical and financial resource tools, and wellness support tools. We will continue to engage companies in a variety of markets including PHR, payer/population management and wellness programs, and point-of-care solutions such as EMRs and CPOE.
We regularly evaluate the market and our technology solutions, looking for areas where we can add compelling value in the delivery of care.
6) What is your future product path that you're willing to discuss?
We are excited about the many areas the SafeMed technology can be applied. As a matter of policy, however, we do not disclose information about our product development roadmap. SafeMed will continue to provide and develop products that address the fundamental challenge in healthcare: delivering the safest, most effective, and most affordable treatment options to patients.
7) PHR has been very slow to take off, but is now showing signs of lift. What, in your view, are the key drivers going forward?
The key driver necessary for PHRs to be successful is to deliver real value. To accomplish this, providing interoperability, computability, security, and actionable information is key. Patients need to be able to easily import medical information into their record from all players in the healthcare ecosystem, including medical history from their electronic medical record, insurance claims information from payers, Rx information from their pharmacy, results and values from lab vendors and imaging centers, etc. Additionally, PHRs need to be more than just storage spaces for health data. To be valuable, this holistic record of the patient’s medical history needs to be computable and have the ability to empower the patient to take an active, collaborative role in their care.
Read more in our 25-page segment analyses, one each on:
a. PHR
b. EMR
c. News/Search/Community
d. Digital Home Health.
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