Misys Licenses Small Practice PM/EMR from iMedica

Misys Healthcare announced this morning that it will license practice management and electronic medical records products from iMedica. Misys will pay $8 million for minority ownership in iMedica plus $5 million in licensing fees. Misys will also get a seat on iMedica's board of directors.

iMedica was founder by former Millbrook executives in 1998. Michael Nissenbaum is president and CEO.

New Misys-labeled product offerings, including an ASP product, will be announced in November. Misys CEO Mike Lawrie said the deal will allow the company to quickly market a small practice product, an area identified earlier as a weakness

Wow, Imedica and Misys national sales force.

Thanks for the update Bob, this is a really huge story.  The iMedica product is fairly pleasant on the interface side.  Not to say I am a expert, but I have viewed it at a trade show for around 30 minutes and as a Software Architect of 20 years I really liked the overall flow and feal of the program.

Cannot speak about the nuts and bolts.

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Regards,
Brendon

Reporter Bob Larson, that's a great story! Thanks!

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I apologize for being redundant as i did not see the earlier post.  Also Nissenbaum did not start iMedica, Dr. Charlie Koo did originally until the old Millbrook team bought him out.  Still--this looks like a great deal for iMedica.  I've worked on an interface between our PMS and their EMR system before they built their own and I even remember the really old application (5 years ago) before their 5.0 release.  It's changed considerably for the better.

I remember using iMedica back when it was still in development. The company was founded  by Dr. Koo who had a PhD (in what, I can't recall) and was based in Silicon Valley. One of the local sales reps lent me a Fujitsu Lifebook with the program on it for a week. Seemed very nice at the time, but it still lacked many features we come to expect today. Funny thing about the story was that I was also looking at eMD's at the time and I showed the rep what was then eMD's TopsChart 3.0. She was so impressed by my demo of eMD's, that she jumped ship and went to work for a local eMD's VAR.

A year or so after I signed with Amicore, she came back to try and sell me on eMD's. Looking back, I wish I had switched. Damn!

This is a good deal for both companies.  Misys desperately needed to get into newer technology which iMedica provides.  iMedica desperately needed cash and a salesforce which Misys provides.  It will be interesting to see how the Misys customers feel about this arrangement.  Many have invested a lot of blood, sweat and $$ to implement Misys EMR/Tiger.  It certainly appears like the two companies are formally dating right now with a possible marriage some time in the future.

kewarren:

MISYS HEALTHCARE AND iMEDICA CORPORATION JOIN FORCES TO ACCELERATE HEALTHCARE IT ADOPTION   Strategic agreement establishes foundation for new solutions focused on small-sized physician practices     RALEIGH , N.C. – August 28, 2007 – “We carefully evaluated other alternatives (to our underperforming clunky antiquated EMR) in Healthcare IT and selected iMedica as our partner based upon its leading technology, robust products, and strong future roadmap. We tried to market our unpopular EMR to small doc offices, but no one was buying.  iMedica’s technology delivers a time-to-market advantage that will enable us to quickly introduce compelling solutions under the Misys brand.

Text in red are additions.

I never had the opportunity to see Mysis Tiger but I had a friend who worked on it and she told me that she "absolutely hated it".  I liked working with iMedica, they have a really good team.  However, during the pilot phase we had a couple of docs who just wouldn't use it as it was intended (i.e, writing something down and then keying it in).  We spent an inordinate amount of time training them appropriately but if you don't use the software as it's intended and ignore the shortcuts (like building custom templates) then you are bound to have problems.    

I recently took a demo of iMedica. Of course a demo is the equivalent of king the tires and looking through the glass of the car window (sticker off).

Anyway, I was impressed. This is must see software for buyers. It covers more bases than many other software vendors. Here is one example: I desire to have access to all the fields in a table. Well, my demo guy, Jeff,  showed me a Word template of all the fields that were accessible for the program! I bitched that they were not accessible, other than a cut and paste, but so what, I had access, which is totally different. ( I wanted a drop down menu like mail merge) . There are very few EMRs that allow you access to their table fields period!
This program is very TPC friendly even though they don't mention it. All the dialog boxes have a little stylus menu.

After viewing this brief demo, I feel sorry for anyone buying an EMR and "COMPARING."
There are so many good EMRs out there that do so much. iMedica is nice. You really SHOULD, know what you want before you look, because this is another nice EMR. All EMRs have good points and bad for me.

I'm always looking for better software and hardware, and this software just adds to my addiction. Just Clone what you want, and spend a career knowing what you want is not what you get.

  I feel sorry for anyone buying an EMR and "COMPARING."

And I feel pain for the very fine vendors on this site, many of them I judge to be eager to be challenged to do a good job for their customers.  I see it all the time, how much they want to "go beyond" what should be expected of them.

 But there has to be a shake out, eventually.  That will or may come when CCHIT becomes  mandatory, or if  a software programmer has one of those "leaps of inference" and suddenly becomes so superior that there is an objective way to discern that it is a better program. 

 
I want to see all the good software companies succeed, but I have seen that marketing matters, and this thread is an example of how a good software company  (iMedica) was languishing without marketing power.

 Idealism is not a good enough marketing tool.
 

 We may be seeing a lot of these mergers in the next years.

rheumdoc
 

 By the way, after the post above I called the cardiology group that has Mysis in place in our town, and interviewed the doc to see if they had an opinion about their ROI. 

 He had no idea. 

But I asked if they had fewer medical records people, and they do.  They're using the space previously used for medical record space for an "echo center".   He acknowledged that they were at least "breaking even", but he does know the maintenance costs. 

 
He most wanted to talk about how much more convenient it was to get his records from anywhere, and I didn't bother to tell him that there were many, less expensive, systems that would do the same.  All of them, just about.  

I only bring up that he is pleased with a system that most members of this board  with a almost never praise.

However, I do believe that they are likely paying more their system than most of us, ongoing, and paid more at start up.

I am starting to wonder if the implementing group has more to do with success than the system itself.
Yes, that seems like common sense.  But it makes the vendors job just that much harder to differentiate themselves.

rheumdoc (again)
 

rheumdoc:

Re: Misys

He most wanted to talk about how much more convenient it was to get his records from anywhere, and I didn't bother to tell him that there were many, less expensive, systems that would do the same.  All of them, just about.  

I only bring up that he is pleased with a system that most members of this board will almost never praise.

Ignorance is Bliss.

digital-doc:

There are very few EMRs that allow you access to their table fields period! 

Password protected databases are of course very easily circumventable, by necessity.  People lose passwords, often, and there always needs to be a backdoor.

There are cheap, easily available tools to determine the passwords to databases.

I doubt there are any exceptions.

DrMurdoch:

digital-doc:

There are very few EMRs that allow you access to their table fields period! 

 

Password protected databases are of course very easily circumventable, by necessity.  People lose passwords, often, and there always needs to be a backdoor.

There are cheap, easily available tools to determine the passwords to databases.

I doubt there are any exceptions.

 

This had nothing to due with password protection and or circumvention. I was referencing the fact that a user could utilize the table fields and develop a number of customized reports (comprehesive or simple) built around the data stored in those fields. I find this field sharing to be the exception with vendors and not the rule. I like it.