The government certification of drchrono's iPad app for Meaningful Use announced on Thursday represents more than a giant leap for the company, which only a few weeks ago secured $675,000 in seed money. It also has the potential to push both electronic health records and mobile health into the mainstream, simultaneously.
While a Fierce colleague rarely praises the general media's reporting on matters regarding healthcare technology (with this example being one of the only cases), we must say that outlets such as Reuters and the Washington Post seem to have hit the nail on the head with their respective reports about the news. Drchrono's app, after all, is free (even if only to the first user in a practice; additional users must pay between $99 and $199 each). And the company's user base already has climbed beyond 100,000 practitioners, up from 55,000 at the beginning of 2011.
What's more, the EHR platform is mobile via the iPad, as the first of its kind to be officially certified, according to the company, beating Epocrates to the punch). With the mobile platform, drchrono will be very convenient for physicians, who already have been transitioning in droves to more mobile pastures.
"This certification transforms our EHR app and the iPad into a potentially affordable platform that could finally drive global usage and adoption of electronic medical records," drchrono co-founder and CEO Michael Nusimow said in a statement. "The government subsidy offered to physicians who adopt our free EHR solution could be transformational in bringing electronic record keeping into every medical practice."
To learn more:
- here's the drchrono announcement
- check out this Washington Post blog post
- read the Reuters article