Practice Fusion - an RIA targeted at doctors in the field

The New York Times has a piece today about Practice Fusion, a San Francisco startup that's using Flex and the concept of rich Internet applications to make a splash in the medical world by providing doctors a free EMR, or electronic medical records application. There are a couple of things that make Practice Fusion stand out, but the central aspect of the application is that they can give it away for free by showing ads and create a viral adoption curve by enabling doctors to send data to their peers who then log into the application and get a sense of how it works. The NYT post highlights some of the privacy issues, but I'll focus more on the technical side of the implementation.

EMR systems are just starting to become popular in the medical field. For a long time there was significant resistance to the systems because in a lot of ways it increased the workload for doctors. Data entry was also a pain point because when doctors are with a patient, they can't be entering all the information or they'll seem inattentive. But with more and more computer savvy doctors coming out of medical school (9+ years of schooling leads to a big lag), demand for EMR systems is on the rise. The only problem is that there are huge costs associated with adding an EMR system. The major players; Misys and Nextgen cost a ton of money and manpower to implement. Practice Fusion on the other hand, is free, browser-based and has a relatively low barrier to entry. The user interface is done in Flex so it stands out from both the current old-school offerings and the typical web interfaces that doctors use. The fact that it's browser based is a plus both from an install standpoint (none) and an adoption standpoint. One of the features of PracticeFusion is that doctors can give other doctors not on the system (specialists) access to the records of their patients. Then those doctors see how well the system works an can start using it themselves for free.

In a lot of ways it's Web 2.0/RIAs showing their muscle in a new market. The competitors tend to be old, expensive, and slow moving. Companies like Practice Fusion started with creating a great user interface/user experience and then built a business around it. So far according to Ryan Howard, the CEO at Practice Fusion, the demand has been fantastic. It's a good reminder of how a good user experience combined with some Web 2.0 ideals can help small companies break into new markets.