Health insurer Aetna has agreed to acquire Medicity in a $500 million deal. Salt Lake City-based Medicity develops systems for physicians and hospital groups to coordinate care and exchange medical information. Medicity's health information exchange (HIE) technology reaches more than 760 hospitals and 125,000 doctors.
Medicity's HIE platform, of course, extends information to physician's mobile devices, too. In the past, Medicity has noted that physicians can use mobile devices to access the data exchanged via its HIE. The company also opened its HIE platform up to third party developers to create apps last year. Another interesting look into Medicity's mobile strategy can be found on its corporate site, where the company points to a future initiative where Bluetooth-enabled devices are used by physicians for order entry. Here's more on these three mobile health-related newsbits from Medicity over past two years:
In December 2009, Medicity made its health information exchange (HIE) platform, called iNexx, available to third party developers to create applications using the platform's application programming interface (API): "Although not a mobile phone platform itself, the iNexx model is perhaps best understood using the analogy of the iPhone platform. In both models, end users can choose and download unique applications that run on the platform architecture to create a composite solution customized to their needs," Dr. James Lassetter Chairman and CEO of Medicity stated in a press release at the time.
In August 2009, Medicity inked a deal with El Camino Hospital to roll out an HIE initiative among care providers in the Silicon Valley area. Interestingly, the data exchanged would be sent to physicians EHRs -- if they didn't have an EHR installed it would be accessible via any Web-enabled device: "Data including ADT, insurance, laboratory results, radiology reports, pathology reports and transcribed documents will be sent directly to the physicians’ electronic health records (EHRs) and practice management systems. For those providers without EHRs, the same information is accessible via any Web-enabled device, whether that is a personal computer or mobile platform, such as a smartphone."
On Medicity's frequently asked questions page, the company explains it's vision of the future, which includes Bluetooth-enabled order entry: "What are Medicity's plans for the future? At Medicity we believe in making technology work for healthcare. We're pursuing technologies that hold the most potential benefit for improving the way that care is delivered. We are currently beta testing a handheld version of Medicity that incorporates a wireless order-entry module. We have an initiative to incorporate Bluetooth wireless technology in a way that would further improve the mobility and usefulness of the Medicity platform."
For more on Aetna's acquisition of Medicity, read the official announcement
Or read the Wall Street Journal's write-up
