Madison Health Tech Community Gains Momentum in 2015

Madison, WI, April 13, 2015 (Newswire.com) - The fast-growing Madison health IT community will be represented by at least 13 companies this week in Chicago at the industry's leading annual conference, which brings together more than 35,000 healthcare IT professionals, clinicians, executives and vendors from around the world.

The Madison companies, which span a wide range of solutions from behavioral health applications to population health management, have grown revenues to nearly $140 million and employ more than 700 people. All will be attending the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference, which also provides speakers, education and networking, from April 12-16 at McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago.

"Madison (aka Med-ison) has put itself on the map as a place for healthcare innovation, with growing companies solving big problems and an expanding pool of capital available to entrepreneurs," said Mark Bakken, founder of Nordic Consulting, the world's largest Epic consulting practice, and HealthX Ventures, a venture fund for startups focused on digital health solutions. "Entrepreneurs are making healthcare more affordable while also making it safer and getting better outcomes.  Madison is helping lead the charge."

According to recent survey responses, here are some additional combined statistics of the Madison Health Tech companies listed below:

·         The group has grown to at least 13 companies in the Madison area, including several new startups

·         More than $34 million of investment dollars were raised in last 12 months

·         The combined companies brought in more than $139 million worth of revenue last year

·         The companies currently employ more than 700 people in the Madison area and hired an additional 79 people in the last year

·         As a whole the group is serving 320 healthcare clients across the United States

Individual Company Notable Achievements:

·         Catalyze is providing compliant cloud infrastructure for over 65 healthcare organizations including the VA, storing records and processing transactions for solutions that enable bundled payments, prevent readmissions, conduct telemedicine visits, engage patients, run analytics, and facilitate clinical communication.

·         CenterX has been certified by the Minnesota Department Health to operate as a Health Data Intermediary (HDI). CenterX also announced an Electronic Prior Authorization solution that has been integrated and tested with Epic.

·         Forward Health Group was ranked as a High Performing Vendor in KLAS’ recently released report on Population Health Performance. The report showed Forward Health Group as top vendor in, among other things, Money’s Worth, Ease of Use, Forecasted Overall Satisfaction and most importantly, Ranked Client’s Best Vendor.

·         healthfinch has automated over 1.5M prescription refill requests, diverting 70% of these tasks from the physician inbox, saving physicians 32,000 hours.

·         Kiio has been granted 5 patents for their innovations.

·         Nordic has been recognized as one of Modern Healthcare’s 100 “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” and the 46th fastest-growing privately held company in the nation on the annual Inc. 500 list.

·         Redox was recently chosen for two accelerator programs, partnering with Johns Hopkins and Texas Medical Center.

·         Symphony launched a venture arm in 2014 called SymphonyAlpha Ventures to put the company’s successful spin-off model to work for healthcare technology entrepreneurs. Since then SymphonyAlpha Ventures has become an investor and technology partner to two Wisconsin-based companies, HighFive Health and Elli Health, which are bringing next-generation technology and process innovation to the fields of pharmacy management and telemedicine, respectively.

·         Wellbe is seeing average patient enrollment/engagement rates of 71%, while most of the industry struggles with patient engagement goals of 5% for meaningful use using patient portals.

·         WITS(MD) is introducing their secure photo capture solution, IMAGE MOVER™, at HIMSS. IMAGE MOVER works on smart devices with a zero PHI footprint.

This fast-moving industry continues to shift, as shown by recent announcements by Medicare and large payers who have set goals to move away from fee-for-service payment structures. The group is committed to continuing to help healthcare meet the industry’s new challenges with the accelerating movement to value-based care.

About Madison Health Tech
The Madison Health Tech group is building a community of digital health innovators and aims to establish Madison as a nationally-recognized hub for growing health technology companies. Our goals include retaining and attracting talent interested in building and growing new companies, encouraging and raising awareness of opportunities to join a health IT startup, cultivating new ideas and encouraging new ventures to develop them, arranging the resources required to help those organizations grow and stay in Madison, and providing visibility to outside individuals and firms looking to invest in HIT. 

Here are the profiles of Madison Health Tech company members and where they can be found at HIMSS (if exhibiting):

About Branch2
Branch2, Inc. is a start-up health information technology company focused on revolutionizing health through an ecosystem of evidence-based behavioral health applications.  Our mission is to change healthcare from reactive to proactive.  We do this by connecting health systems and providers to a network of evidence-based behavioral health software and data solutions designed to promote proactive health. 

About Catalyze (HIMSS Booth #1699)
Catalyze provides HIPAA-compliant infrastructure services with a complete set of tools for handling, storing and transmitting PHI in the cloud. The future of healthcare will be powered by scalable, HIPAA-compliant, interoperable infrastructure. Catalyze is building the groundwork so healthcare innovation can move faster. 

About CenterX (HIMSS Booth #4094)
CenterX is a comprehensive e-prescribing network focused on improving patients’ medication adherence. CenterX offers advanced e-prescribing services, electronic prior authorization, clinically relevant prescription history, full clinical fax service, and clinical messaging and HISP services/CCD exchanges. CenterX works with prescribers, pharmacies, payers, and software vendors to create an open, efficient network that reduces cost and improves patient care. 

About Forward Health Group (HIMSS Booth #5052)
While many are talking about improving health care outcomes, we are actually doing it. We are equipping health care institutions across the country with the necessary tools to impact quality and financial outcomes in the new health care landscape. Forward Health Group’s PopulationManager®, a powerful web-based engine, helps turn data from multiple, disparate sources — EHRs, labs, claims and others — into fuel to manage populations of patients, driving improvements in the quality outcomes equated with both clinical improvement and financial success. 

About healthfinch (HIMSS Booth #5273)
healthfinch makes Care Redesign applications that seamlessly integrate with the EHR to automate, delegate, and simplify the clinical tasks that are overwhelming physician inboxes. Our flagship product, SwoopTM (formerly RefillWizard), is used by major health systems to automate the prescription renewal request workflow. Using Swoop, organizations have dramatically decreased physician inbox tasks, saving over 1.5 million minutes of physician time. In addition to the time and efficiency savings, Swoop’s “care gap batching” feature identifies when patients are due for an office visit or diagnostic test. This proactive approach to patient care can be a critical component to quality improvement programs. 

About Kiio
Kiio transforms manual, imprecise, subjective processes used by physical therapists into automatic, accurate, objective measurements. A patented wireless force sensor is integrated with clinical software (with animated exercises) and a mobile patient app to increase clinical efficiency and patient adherence. 

About Moxe Health
Moxe Health provides the technology, process and people required to streamline your EHR integration. Working with both health systems and application vendors, Moxe is an extension of your team - leveraging our experience and technology to simplify the delivery of data and workflow integration. 

About Nordic (HIMSS Booth #1699)
The world’s largest Epic consulting practice, Nordic is ranked #1 by KLAS for providing Epic EHR consulting services to healthcare organizations and is a KLAS Category Leader. Nordic specializes in Advisory, Implementation, Maintenance and Support, Mergers and Acquisitions, Connect, and Optimization. Nordic’s 400 consultants average over 10 years HIT experience and five certifications. 

About Propeller Health (HIMSS Booth #6420)
Founded in 2010, Propeller Health provides digital solutions to measurably improve respiratory health. One of the first mobile platforms with FDA clearance, Propeller combines sensors, mobile apps and predictive analytics to monitor and engage patients, increase adherence and encourage effective self-management. The company partners with integrated delivery systems and health plans seeking new solutions to improve quality measures, strengthen care teams and reduce the cost of care for asthma and COPD, the 5th and 6th most expensive diseases in the US. 

About Redox (HIMSSBingo sponsor)
The Redox Engine is the modern API for EHR integration. We help developers integrate with EHRs and health systems manages their connections to the cloud. 

About Symphony Corporation
Symphony provides consulting and managed services to help health systems manage their clinical and administrative data and optimize their technology applications. Symphony has successfully incubated and spun off several technologies that were later acquired. In 2013 alone, Symphony spin-offs generated nearly $250 million in acquisition value. 

About Wellbe (HIMSS Booth #1699)
Wellbe, the inventor of the cloud-based Guided CarePath, works with health providers to engage patients as partners in their episodes of care. Our Guided CarePaths empower patients to learn and take the actions required to achieve better outcomes at lower costs. High-performing hospitals use Wellbe’s Connected Care solutions to improve the experience and efficiency of helping patients to successfully navigate their medical treatments and surgeries. 

About WITS(MD) (HIMSS Booth #4387)
WITS(MD) provides seamless image workflow solutions for medical image management (PACS/VNA) and electronic health record (EHR) systems. The company’s flagship product, IMAGE MOVER, securely captures medical images from smart devices and integrates them directly within the EHR. 

About HIMSS
HIMSS is a global, cause-based, not-for-profit organization focused on better health through information technology (IT). HIMSS leads efforts to optimize health engagements and care outcomes using information technology.

HIMSS is a cause-based, global enterprise producing health IT thought leadership, education, events, market research and media services around the world. Founded in 1961, HIMSS encompasses more than 52,000 individuals, of which more than two-thirds work in healthcare provider, governmental and not-for-profit organizations across the globe, plus over 600 corporations and 250 not-for-profit partner organizations, that share this cause.  HIMSS, headquartered in Chicago, serves the global health IT community with additional offices in the United States, Europe, and Asia.