Y-Combinator incubated company DrChrono, the EHR company currently focused exclusively on iPad- and iPhone-toting providers, has added digitized patient education content in an exclusive licensing deal with the Mayo Clinic to help its DrChrono customers fulfill the patient education component of meaningful use.
DrChrono CEO and Co-Founder Michael Nusimow told MobiHealthNews during a recent interview that the content from Mayo Clinic will be presented to patients as they sign in via iPads in their physicians' waiting rooms. While the deal brings more than 2,600 pieces of content and more than 300 educational videos from the Mayo Clinic to DrChrono's platform, physicians will be able to curate that content and tailor it to each patient. The EHR vendor can also automatically include different types of content based on what's in that particular patient's medical record.
Nusimow also sees opportunities to let physicians know when patients view certain videos, which can help trigger conversations in the exam room about the content the patient just viewed or read.
The Mayo Clinic content is also going to be made available to patients through DrChrono's patient facing portal, iPhone app, iPad app, and Android app, so that patients can access that content any time the choose. Nusimow sees future opportunities to help physicians better understand which content their patients are viewing through the apps and portal between visits, too.
“I’m pleased that Mayo Clinic’s patient education materials, which are normally only available to Mayo patients, now will be available via the internet to all patients in the United States,” Dr. Steven A. Smith, medical director for Patient Education at Mayo Clinic’s Rochester, Minnesota campus, said in a statement. "Doctors distributing these educational documents and videos to their patients can be confident they contain content that will assist them in their delivery of clinical care.”
Nusimow told MobiHealthNews that by including content from a trusted healthcare provider like the Mayo Clinic, DrChrono's provider customers probably don't have to take the time to review patient education materials for accuracy. Nusimow says that some EHR vendors that offer patient education materials scrape it from the web, which can make for content of "varying quality", he said.
DrChrono currently serves small practices and ambulatory healthcare practices -- everything from single doctor practices up to 70 physicians in the practice, Nusimow said. The company currently has about 40,000 providers using its EHR.
DrChrono has also been progressive on the patient generated data front. It was one of the first EHR companies to integrate data from consumer health devices offered by iHealth.
