What exactly is MedicalRecords.com? A health database? A doctors’ community? An encyclopedia site? Not exactly. It’s a lead generation startup for the electronic medical records sector. Sound boring or cryptic? Here’s why it’s not.
The U.S. government set aside about $27 billion through 2009’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to incentivize doctors to move patient medical records to an electronic system. There are about 750,000 doctors, dentists, and chiropractors who qualify for the money, and only 20 percent of the market has adopted electronic medical records (EMR). To top it off, it can be a confusing space: there are about 400 different EMR software makers, many with similar sounding names, says MedicalRecords.com founder Durjoy “Ace” Bhattacharjya.
The startup, which works out of Avalon Ventures’ office in Cambridge, MA, has developed a platform for connecting doctors with EMR providers in a meaningful way. MedicalRecords built a database of all the companies in the sector from the ground up, says Bhattacharjya. On MedicalRecords.com, doctors fill out some information on their practice and what kind of technology they’re looking for, and MedicalRecords.com’s engine finds a few EMR software makers that fit. MedicalRecords.com calls the doctor’s offices to confirm their identities and what it is they’re looking for, and then sells that doctor’s contact information as a sales lead to the software makers.
It’s a pricier sales lead, at $150 to $300 apiece, than what you might see in other software niches, says Bhattacharjya. But “nobody’s figured out how to solve this problem [of selling the software to doctors],” he says. “Some of these guys are GE, and they still can’t figure out how to get a doctor to buy their stuff.” They’re willing to pay to get in front of doctors who have actually started the shopping process, says Bhattacharjya.
Doctors aren’t exactly known for being an early-adopter, tech-savvy population, says Bhattacharjya. (He would know; he comes from a family of them.) Many are reluctant to take their records digital because they’ve gone on for decades with the paper format, says Bhattacharjya. But the incentives are there: the $27 billion in federal funding breaks down to about $44,000 for each practice that has implemented and used the software in patient care—and starting in 2015, the government will dock the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements of those who haven’t made the switch.
MedicalRecords.com is looking to become a comprehensive, unbiased electronic medical records database, and to
