different flavors of EMRs, including New York companies Hello Health and Medivo, both of which have raised venture capital recently.
When Nusbaum started looking for a new challenge in IT, he decided he wanted to take the EMR to the next level. “What I realized is that electronic records are a problem—they’re static,” he says. “You go to your primary-care doctor and they’ve got a chart on you. You go to someone else, they’ve got a chart on you. None of those electronic records communicate with each other.”
MedXCom is designed to work with any EMR. When patients agree to use the product with their doctors, their EMRs are automatically migrated into the app. Patients can then add information to the app, and they can scan and upload paper records from their visits to other doctors. They can also sign up to get reminders of routine checkups for themselves or their kids by phone or text, and they can use the app to schedule appointments.
Nusbaum says the feedback from patients was so positive he decided to create a version of the app that anybody could use, regardless of whether or not their doctor signs up for MedXCom. That product, called MedXVault, will be released by the end of this month, Nusbaum says.
Giffen charges physicians an average of $49 a month to use the telecommunications features of MedXCom—far less than the $250 or so they would pay per month for an answering service with a live operator, Nusbaum says. Doctors who opt out of the telecom services can still use the EMR features at no charge, and everything is free for patients, he says.
Nusbaum says he believes physicians will be motivated to ditch their answering services and use MedXCom instead. In addition to forwarding patient calls, the app can record those calls, archive them, and transcribe them. Nusbaum believes the recording capability is essential—not only to provide physicians with a complete record of phone conversations to stay organized, but also to help protect them in the event of a lawsuit. “If you call your credit card company, they record the conversation,” he says. “But speak to your doctor about healthcare and we’re not recording that. It doesn’t make any sense.” Patients are informed that they’re being recorded on MedXCom, he says.
Giffen employs a staff of 10 full-time people, including one who’s solely responsible for making sure the apps comply with federal patient-privacy laws, Nusbaum says. Giffen has developed MedXCom and MedXVault for the iPhone and is currently beta testing Android versions.
Besides raising a second round of financing, Nusbaum says he is looking to recruit a new executive team. “This was designed by doctors for doctors and patients, but we’ve grown to the point where we need to have professional management,” he says.
As for the rapid proliferation of competitors in the EMR space, Nusbaum remains confident he can keep his company ahead of the curve. “The future is really in integrating those EMRs and getting all that data together,” he says. “We believe we’re going to be the company that does that.”
