So, here’s a vendor move which I’m surprised others haven’t made yet (at least to my knowledge).

GE Healthcare has formed an official Patient Safety Organization, one blessed by HHS and AHRQ, a step which puts its EMR in the hospital buyer’s face without its having to constantly pitch.

As I see it, this is a clever move which not only helps GE gather data useful in refining Centricity, but also helps make sure people don’t think of safety problems when they think EMR.

The PSO works as follows.  GE has brought together sixteen hospitals, most in Rhode Island, to share data on medical errors.  The data will be captured through MERS, a Web-based event reporting system which all participants will use.   To handle heavy-duty data crunching, GE’s PSO is working with SAS, whose job it will be to integrate and analyze root causes that  contribute to risk.

Not only does this promote GE Healthcare’s brand, it also tightens the bond between itself and the hospitals, which may become reliant on the integration and data management capabilities vendor like SAS can supply.  (Somehow, I doubt your average community hospital has SAS  on board;  its products are just too costly.)

All told, a very interesting development.

GE has announced a new VC fund for healthcare to the tune of $250 million. They’re calling it the GE Healthymagination Fund. I wonder how long it took them to come up with that name. Here’s some more details on what areas the VC fund will target:

The formation of the fund is part of GE’s $6 billion Healthymagination initiative, a global commitment to deliver better healthcare to more people at lower cost. The fund will target three broad areas for investment:

-Broad-based Diagnostics, including imaging, home health, patient monitoring, molecular diagnostics, pathology, novel imaging agents and other technologies for disease diagnosis.
-Healthcare Information Technology, including electronic medical records, clinical information systems, healthcare information exchanges and value-added data services.
-Life Sciences, including tools for research and development in biopharmaceuticals and stem cells, and technologies for manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals and vaccines.

The fund will draw on capabilities from across GE Healthcare, GE Capital and GE Global Research, and will have a global footprint.

No doubt GE has a ton of capital available to them. One thing that I find interesting is how GE will balance the funds goals of investing in high quality products and the challenge of funding something that might compete with an existing GE product. I think the EMR example is a simple and good one. Will GE fund an EMR that competes with Centricity EMR. This is nothing new for large corporations, but is definitely a challenge they’ll face.

One thing is certain. There are a lot of really great opportunities to invest in the healthcare space right now.

Thanks to Shahid for pointing this out.

This is a SHOUT OUT to all doctors who use EMRs. Which EMRs do you use and how do you like them. Do you love them or hate them? Are you luke warm in your like or dislike? Tell us which EMR you have and how you feel about it. Also tell us what you would do (the mistakes and the good moves) if you were looking into getting an EMR at this time.

I have personally looked at Greenway PrimeSuite, SOAPware, SRSsoft, e-MDs, AmazingCharts, NextGen, Centricity and others.

Can you comment on the cost and the usability?. Let’s share information so we can help other doctors choose systems that are usable, simple to learn, effective and efficient.

If you don’t have an EMR and are looking into one, what questions would you have for those “who have gone before you”? What advice would you be interested in receiving?