between providers. But increasingly, patients are themselves becoming users of EHR software through online portals. One of them, called MyChart, is developed by Epic Systems, a large health records vendor headquartered a few miles south of ImageMoverMD in Verona, WI. With MyChart, patients can use computers and mobile devices to do things like request prescription refills, view lab results, and communicate with their primary care physicians. At organizations like UW Health, which has licensed MyChart for years and now has also licensed ImageMover for its dermatology department, patients can send their doctors photos, potentially replacing an in-person appointment with an electronic visit, or e-visit.
“If you have a teenager with acne, rather than going into the clinic once a month to renew a prescription, you take a photo of your kid’s face and send it in through MyChart,” says K. Thomas Pickard, who became CEO of ImageMoverMD a little over a year ago and recently relocated to Wisconsin from California. “The dermatologist reviews the e-visit and calls your prescription into the pharmacy. Your child doesn’t have to get removed from school, you don’t need to take off from work, and the dermatologist makes better use of his or her time.”
Pickard says that hospitals and clinics can elect to license ImageMover for providers to use, without also opening it up to patients. However, he says that increasingly, patients want to be involved in their healthcare, and that this is something most health systems are aware of and trying to embrace.
In addition to UW Health, Pickard says that four other health systems are currently using ImageMoverMD’s tools. One is the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, WI, which Wendt says initially purchased the software to import a batch of nearly 3 million images. They had been part of an archive that ophthalmologists and other employees need to access, and the vendor of the software that underpinned the archive was preparing to cut off its support, he says.
“Once we solved that, we started talking about integrating with [Marshfield Clinic’s] EHR system,” Wendt says.
Pickard declined to name the company’s three other clients.
He also kept mum when asked whether the startup was expecting to raise additional outside financing. (Last July, ImageMoverMD raised $1.6 million, mostly from angel investors in Wisconsin.)
The company currently has five full-time employees, Pickard says, and he expects the engineering team will expand in the next year. Wendt says that he and Bruce continue to be involved on a part-time basis.
Looking toward the future, Pickard says the startup is focused on signing up more customers, and expanding the use of ImageMover at those health systems that are already using the applications. He wouldn’t rule out an exit at some point in the future, though says it’s not something he gives much thought to at the moment.
“[We have] no interest in being acquired now—we’re a little too early in our history,” he says, then pauses. “But anything is possible.”
