It is safe to say that most people agree that the Internet plays an important role in our daily lives and in the day-to-day operations of many traditional businesses. But can the Internet play a crucial role in the medical arena?
Allyn McAuley, co-founder and CEO of Bellevue-based Lumedx Corporation (www.lumedx.com), believes it can.
McAuley’s company recently launched a beta test of its CardioChart.net Intranet product at the Massachusetts General Hospital. CardioChart.net is an Intranet portal designed to make physician-generated cardiovascular patient reports available anywhere on the healthcare network.
Dr. Eugene Pomerantsev, director of Information Systems at Massachusetts General Hospital, is already very pleased with the results.
“We have thousands of workstations,” notes Pomerantsev. “With CardioChart.net we don’t need to configure these workstation to view reports; all we need is a Web browser.
McAuley isn’t that surprised that his product is getting a lot of attention from the Doctors.
According to McAuley, Doctors have always been at the forefront in introducing the latest communications technology in the workplace. He brings up the pager as one of the earlier examples and the palm pilot as a recent example.
McAuley himself has also been at the forefront in the cardiovascular clinical information systems market. He launched his company (then called Seattle Systems) in 1990 with his Brother. His Brother, a Doctor, brought to the business medical experience. McAuley brought on board his business experience.
Their flagship product Apollo Advance, a clinical data repository that integrates key patient information within a database, is now up and running in 300 hospitals.
However, in the late 90’s when the Internet took off, there was no looking back.
Now that CardioChart.net is allowing physicians and clinicians at Massachusetts Hospital to view cardiovascular reports generated through Apollo Advance basically from anywhere, they are able to save a lot of time and be more efficient.
McAuley points out that now Doctors can even view the necessary information they need for their first procedure of the morning, from the convenience of their home.