Birmingham, AL-based Companies Head to 2008 HIMSS Conference in Orlando, FL

Birmingham-based healthcare IT companies are traveling to Orlando, Florida this week for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference, the largest healthcare IT show of the year.

Birmingham, Al. (PRWEB) February 24, 2008 -- Birmingham-based healthcare IT companies are traveling to Orlando, Florida this week for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference, the largest healthcare IT show of the year.

Healthcare IT industry stalwarts like EHS and Emageon will be there, along with recent phenoms like Awarix (now owned by McKesson) and MedMined (now owned by Cardinal Health), and recent startups such as Acuitec and ComplyMD. Other Birmingham based companies attending the show include ETG, MedSeek and SearchExpress.

Biotech is recognized by the region's leadership as a growth sector, but the "Healthcare IT" software sector may soon be garnering more attention. Software companies employ roughly the same number of employees in Birmingham as biotech, create more coveted "white collar" jobs, and generate returns for the founders and investors in more a timely manner. This sector also leverages local centers of competence such as UAB and St. Vincent's.

Statistics on Birmingham-based Technology Companies
Out of approximately 570 tech companies in the Birmingham region:

These companies will gather with the Nation's Healthcare IT professionals in Orlando at the HIMSS Conference February 24-28, 2008 at the Orange County Conference Center.

Show Exhibitors from Birmingham --
Birmingham companies exhibiting at the show include Acuitec, Awarix (McKesson), Emageon, MedMined (Cardinal Health) and MedSeek.

Acuitec: Acuitec provides comprehensive solutions for High-Acuity Care. Their flagship products are Vigilant Perioperative Information Management Solution (VPIMS) and Vigilance remote visualization and patient monitoring solution. The VPIMS solution arms clinicians with the information required throughout the perioperative continuum of care; simultaneously tracking and charting events while monitoring patient data. The VPIMNS solution provides all clinical charting including, Nurse Charting, Pre-operative charting and Anesthesia Charting throughout the entire perioperative process.

The Vigilance product is unique in that enables the physicians to remotely monitor multiple patients during care with customizable built-in intelligent alarms. This is achieved by providing video streaming, patient vitals, treatment procedures and events, as well as access to multiple different system all through one interface that can be used on the desktop or via hand held devices such as PDA's, etc. The Vigilant product is used by anesthesiologists and surgeons to simultaneously monitor multiple patients in the OR and by intensivists within the ICU to oversee care of multiple patients. A new development is being tested for remote patient management for field service care by the US Army.

Vigilance has been nominated as a finalist by Microsoft Healthcare User Group as the "Innovative Product of 2008". The winner of this award will be announced at the HIMSS conference on Monday, February 25th at the Microsoft booth. Acuitec's management is excited at the potential of being awarded such a prestigious award. For more information refer to www.acuitec.com.

Awarix (McKesson): Recently acquired by McKesson Corporation, Awarix, Inc. is one of McKesson's first companies to offer an enterprise patient care visibility system. The Awarix solution is designed to drive a high-quality, efficient experience for each patient while providing real-time feedback to the care team for better management of capacity and patient throughput. The solution identifies and helps to eliminate the bottlenecks that delay treatment and extend the patient stay. To highlight activity and patient status, the system provides color-coded, at-a-glance views of the hospital's floor plan mounted throughout the facility. For more information refer to www.mckesson.com

Emageon: Emageon provides healthcare technology solutions to over 500 hospitals across the United States. In 2000, Emageon started with a single enterprise class solution that allowed large hospitals and health systems to consolidate the management of digital images across multiple departmental systems. The results were operational and clinical efficiencies that set the stage for rapid growth and an eventual initial public offering in 2005. Through a series of strategic acquisitions, its family of products now include RadSuite(TM) and HeartSuite(TM), which are at the center of over thirty million medical diagnoses and patient care decisions each year. All Emageon solutions are built on a unified Enterprise Content Management platform offering advanced visualization and tools for real time clinical analysis of medical images, reports and associated patient content. Emageon's solutions help customers enhance patient care, automate workflow and lower costs. For more information refer to www.emageon.com.

MedMined (Cardinal Health): More than 250 hospitals across the country have turned to Cardinal Health to help prevent, detect, monitor and treat hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), a problem that affects one in every 20 patients across the U.S. and costs the health care industry an estimated $20 billion each year. The MedMined™ Data Mining Surveillance Service monitors the entire hospital for early signs of an emerging issue and targets improvement efforts where and when they can have the most impact. Using technology similar to that used by credit card companies to monitor purchases for fraud, this patented technology automatically identifies patterns indicative of specific and correctable quality breakdowns without predefined search criteria, user-defined control charts or alerts, or chart review. MedMined™ services were developed to help hospitals produce quality of care improvements and measurable cost savings by providing real-time measurement of data related to HAIs, and clinical, evidence-based practice recommendations that enable immediate interventions to prevent infections from spreading. Electronic infection surveillance enables hospitals to significantly reduce the time necessary for manual data collection and analysis, and redeploy their infection control resources to value-added areas that directly impact patient care, such as clinician education and infection prevention initiatives. The service is also designed for start-to-finish implementation in less than 60 days, with only a minimal resource requirement from the hospital's information technology department.
Hospitals using MedMined™ services realized more than 13 percent reductions of HAIs on average in the first year and have repeatedly produced an average 300 percent internal rate of return within 12 months. Additionally, MedMined™ services recently received the notable "Peer Reviewed" designation from the Healthcare Financial Management Association. For more information refer to www.cardinal.com/medmined.

MEDSEEK: Birmingham, Ala.-based MEDSEEK provides healthcare organizations with Enterprise eHealth solutions to fully engage and strengthen relationships with key constituents -- physicians, patients, employees, and consumers. By connecting information and communities to foster an enhanced experience with the organization, hospitals will improve community advocacy, revenue and patient throughput, and clinical decision making. MEDSEEK's comprehensive technology platform and strategic consulting services create the infrastructure and provide the thought leadership for hospitals to deliver the most powerful Portal solutions. With more than ten years' experience and 600+ hospital customers, MEDSEEK has the experience and expertise to meet the diverse needs of the healthcare community. MEDSEEK also maintains offices in California and Mississippi. For more information refer to www.medseek.com.

Show Attendees from Birmingham--
Other Birmingham-based companies attending HIMSS include ComplyMD, EHS, ETG and SearchExpress.

ComplyMD: ComplyMD provides web-based patient encounter documentation software dedicated to improve efficiency, productivity and profitability through proper physician documentation for physicians and healthcare delivery systems. ComplyMD is delivered via software-as-a-service (SaaS), either over the Internet or hosted internally on a facility's Intranet. For more information refer to www.complymd.com.

EHS: EHS, a Birmingham, Alabama-based software development company, has developed a single solution practice management and electronic medical record offering. Serving clients in 45 states and the Virgin Islands, EHS's core market includes ambulatory physician practices, community health centers and rural health centers. The EHS product is deployed in either a distributed turnkey environment or via an ASP hosted environment in their Birmingham office. For more information refer to www.ehsmed.com.

ETG: ETG is changing the way medical practices run their computer systems by offering a superior way to use integrated technology. We combine the benefits of managed services, thin client computing, and software hosting to deliver unmatched value to our clients. For more information refer to www.etg.net.

SearchExpress: SearchExpress/Medical Document Imaging lets doctors' offices and hospitals scan, OCR, index and search their insurance explanation of benefits (EOB's) and other documents. In addition to searching with your browser, you can also search directly from any software application. For example, if you are in your practice management software, Microsoft Office, or email, just highlight a patient name and press a function key to perform a SearchExpress search and display the EOB's or other documents containing the patient name. Executive Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Birmingham, AL, has been developing the SearchExpress family of enterprise document management software for 24 years. For more information refer to www.searchexpress.com.

Contact:
Maggie Wood
ComplyMD,LLC
205.618.8868
maggie@complymd.com

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