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By Andrew Haeg
December 2, 1999
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RealAudio 3.0 |
The medical-technology industry has long been one of Minnesota's prime economic
engines. "Medical Alley," as the industry association is called, remains
dominated by medical device-makers like Medtronic and St.Jude. But now a number
of local companies are trying to create a new industry at the intersection of
medical and information technology.
EARLY THIS DECADE,
Daniel Steinberger says he realized how inefficient the
health-care industry was, based on his experience in both medicine and
information technology. By combining the two, he thought he could streamline the
health-care process, improve the quality of care and just maybe make a lot of
money.
Steinberger: When a doctor dictates a note, it sets off a stream of activity; a tape is generated, someone actually has to transcribe that tape, someone has to put that document into something and that has to come back, and someone else has to sign off on it. If you can eliminate all of those steps, that's very, very powerful, and I think it ultimately gets back to physicians spending more time with patients and less time on paperwork.In 1994, Steinberger founded cMore Medical, now based in the Minneapolis warehouse district, with software that captures medical images from endoscopies and colonoscopies, pictures of your inner organs. The technology enables specialists to send the medical information electronically to referring physicians or radiologists. cMore has more than tripled its revenues every year since 1997 and this year expects to surpass $3.5 million in revenues.
Credit part of that success to doctors, who are increasingly willing to use new methods and technologies to save time and money, and to improve their performance. Managed-care providers are also warming to technology because of its potential to cut costs. Barry Hieb is a researcher at the Gartner Group, a think tank that studies information technology.
Hieb: The most expensive tool is the pen in the hand of a doctor, because that's the way orders are done.Hieb says some $250 billion of the nation's $1.2 trillion in medical costs could be eliminated by streamlining health care.
Darren Marhula is a health-care technology analyst at Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. He says pressure to reduce costs while delivering quality care is creating opportunity.
Marhula: There is incentive to be competitive like any other industry in the world and actually control costs, and understand costs and operate efficiently, and it's that catalyst right there that's driving the growth in this sector.A number of local companies are trying to capitalize on this trend. They include Bloomington-based Abaton.com, which operates a Web site aimed at streamlining the flow of information between health-care providers. Then there's Promedicus Systems, based in Minneapolis, whose software guides physicians to the best and most economical treatments.
Another is Diametrics Medical. Last year, the accounting firm Deloitte and Touche named Diametrics the state's second-fastest growing company. Its devices monitor critically-ill patients through catheters and provide up-to-the-second measurements. Johnson and Johnson and Hewlett Packard's subsidiary Agilent Technologies are making devices that will use Diametrics' technology.
Barry Hieb of the Gartner Group thinks the rising number of companies trying to combine medical and information technology, bode well for the young industry's future.
Hieb: The future of information technology in health care is very strong and it is an extremely exciting time. And, as always, it's also a very chaotic time.From that chaos will be born market leaders and industry standards, cMore, Diametrics and other Minnesota companies are hoping to be among them.
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