Groundbreaking Technology That Thinks and Works Like a Physician [Interview] [Transcript]
Guest: Dave Lareau
Presenter: Neal Howard
Guest Bio: In 1978, Medicomp Systems pioneered its patented MEDCIN Knowledge Engine, co-designed with physicians, to transform disorganized, complex arrays of medical information into structured, clinically relevant data at the point-of-care. Leveraging its flagship engine, Medicomp’s Quippe suite of solutions uniquely delivers longitudinal patient information within a problem-oriented clinical view, mirroring the way physicians think and work to drive optimal patient outcomes.Quippe also includes wizard-based documentation functionality, which integrates into existing clinical workflows and EHRs, enabling health systems to further enhance EHR usability. With Quippe, healthcare organizations of all sizes can satisfy quality measures and regulatory compliance, increasing physician productivity while effectively positioning themselves for future market demands.
Segment overview: Dave Lareau, CEO of Medicomp Systems shares how Medicomp developed technology that thinks and works like a physician at the point of care.
Transcript – Medicomp Technology
Neal Howard: Hello and welcome to this Health Supplier Segment on Health Professional Radio. So glad that you could join us today, I’m your host Neal Howard. In studio today, we have Mr. Dave Lareau. He is the CEO of Medicomp Systems and he is here today to talk with us about some groundbreaking technology that well thinks and works like a physician at the point of care. Welcome in the Health Professional Radio Dave Lareau.
Dave Lareau: Thank you, it’s good to be here. I understand that you want to hear a little bit about Medicomp Systems and my background.
N: Absolutely.
D: Medicomp was founded in 1978 by Peter Goltra. His goal was to invent a method by which a computerized system could present relevant clinical information to physicians at the point of care. And by that, I mean if a physician is treating an asthmatic, what are the symptoms, history, physical exam, test diagnosis and therapy that are relevant for that. In order to build that, Peter took the approach of working with physicians who were board-certified in both internal medicine and their specialties and worked for the past 39 years, we’ve been working with those physicians to say, ‘When you see a patient with the following clinical presentation, whether it’s a problem, a symptom, or a diagnosis, what would you want to think about, document, order and treat?’ So for the last 39 years, we’ve been doing that with physicians in order to build an engine that works at the point of care. For about the first 8 or 9 years of that project, Peter and the physicians had their own electronic medical record system which we turned into an engine that could be used in any system in the mid-90s and we’ve been licensing that as middleware to EHR vendors and enterprises for the last 20 years. We have what is called ‘Curated Clinical Content’ and to curate it means that instead of relying on machine learning or on artificial intelligence, we actually sit with physicians and interview them, and nurses and other allied health professionals and say, ‘What would you be thinking?, ‘What would you want to see?’ So we’ve built an engine with approximately 330,000 clinical concepts with millions of relevancy links between them so that a clinician can get a short medium or long list of items that are relevant, given any of tens of thousands of clinical presentations. We built on top of that, some tools that make it possible for an enterprise to take that and modify it to their own workflows and their own needs. What that has led to is, for example at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, they have an ‘Allscripts Sunrise Enterprise System’. But their ambulatory physician said, ‘This looks like it was built to handle building transactions. It doesn’t work or think the way a physician does, it’s slowing us down, it’s getting in our way, can this be added, can we take our product which is called, ‘Quippe’, with our engine and add it to our existing system in order to keep all the good things our system does like registration, billing, scheduling, order entry, pharmacy, radiology, etc.’ ‘Can we just put something out there in the physician offices that enables them to see more patients, work better, work faster, get their documentation done, meet their quality measures, adapt to their workflows, get out at 5’o clock, and still see 25% more patients?’ And that’s what they’ve done. We know as a company that the enterprise systems, Epic, Cerner, Meditech, Allscripts, etc, are going to be there, they are there, they are running the enterprise. But we also know that they were not built to work or think the way physicians do at the point of care. We built that and we built our technology so that if one of these systems can support and interface to a web browser and either modern web browsers, they can build our stuff in as if it’s part of their system which had a couple of effects: happier physicians, they see more patients in less time, and they’re getting actual structured clinical data at the point of care mapped to all the standards like Snomed, ICD 10, LOINC, RxNorm, etc. It’s been a good strong addition where people have added it and we try to make the technology as easy as possible to add to existing systems because we know there’s tremendous investments in those and they’re not going away.
N: When you add your system to an existing system, does it begin to filter overtime individual patients or patient types, is that what we’re talking about? But not individual patients, but presenting symptoms and things of that nature, is that what we’re talking about? Or does it actually infiltrate the existing system and clean information from it adding to its own?
D: Those are two related things and they’re a little bit different but they’re related. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say I have a patient and more, more patients as our population ages have multiple problems, what people in the industry call ‘Comorbidities’. If I have diabetes, I might also have heart disease, in the early stages of renal failure. If I’m a nephrologist, looking at that patient in an enterprise, I may want to see just a renal view of their labs, their meds, their symptoms, their other problems, etc. What our diagnostic index allows somebody to do is, with that existing data, just click on a problem like chronic renal failure and see just the information that relates to that, not the foot x-ray when they sprained their ankle two weeks ago, but just that, and switch the views to get clinically relevant views. They can then take that and say, ‘Now I’ve seen the information, I want to copied it into the current encounter, and now, I want to do a review of symptoms for renal failure which our engine will present and say ‘Is the urine dark? Is it cloudy? Are they having any thirst etc.?” Are they having any swelling of the legs, physical exam findings, etc.?’ We can both filter existing information if it’s in the record, but we can also present a workup for any of tens of thousands of presentations for new problems or existing problems which I want to monitor in real time at the point of care.
N: Have you received any information from physicians that are utilizing this system that they’ve I guess, maybe a number for instance, if the standard is 15 minutes with a patient – have they’ve been able to spend 30 minutes, 35 minutes with a patient based on this new technology?
D: The issue there is how much of the time they actually spend with the patient that they get to focus on the patient while administrative stuff like documenting, billing, etc.? What we’re seeing is that physicians can focus more on the patient and in a 15 minute visit, they can spend 11 to 12 minutes focusing on the patient and maybe 2 minutes documenting as opposed to 7 minutes documenting, 8 minutes with the patient. What has happened at Phoenix Children’s particularly is they found that they could see more patients in the same amount of time and at 5pm they could leave having seen 20% more patients because it doesn’t take so long the document, they’re doing the documentation at the point of care, they’re not having to stay late and dictate, and then look, and then review the transcription, and correct it and send it back. The documentation is being done in real time, at the point of care without interrupting the way they work or think, it meets the workflows. What they found out that they can do is, in specialty clinics that had a 3 month backlog, within a couple of months, they’re all clear-up and they were able to see more patients, provide better care, and do it in less time. Several physicians there made a comment after about 3 weeks of using the system, ‘This made me love medicine again. Now, I can focus on my patient instead of the 40% to 50% of my time that I was spending on other paper work and administrative tasks.’
N: Where can we go and learn more about Medicomp and this new brand new technology?
D: You can go to our website which is www.medicomp.com. People who are really interested can contact us. We occasionally do webinars on our technology, Lisa from Amendola helps us with that. We are also occasionally do speaking engagements, but if anybody wants any information, they can to do medicomp.com. Send an inquiry to info@medicomp.com and we’ll get right back to them. I think people will be surprised by these capabilities and what it can add to their existing system.
N: Dave Lareau, CEO of Medicomp Systems. We’ve been here talking about a clinically driven technology that they’ve developed that enables physicians to see more patients for more time and increasing both the satisfaction for the patient and the provider. Thank you so much for coming in today Dave.
D: Thank you very much and it was my pleasure.
N: Transcripts and audio of this program are available at healthprofessionalradio.com.au and also at hpr.fm. You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. Listen in and download at SoundCloud.