I came across the following article at Forbes.com: If Google Health Failed, Why Will Your Health Company Succeed? The first thing that caught my attention was the premise of the headline: Google is big, smart and has a lot of resources. If they can’t get a health portal right who can?
I immediately thought, “Well lots of big, smart and resourceful companies attempt new ventures and fail miserably.” Often times it requires agility, freedom from past investments and timing that contribute to success in blazing new trails.
So back to this Forbes article. It really is an interview with the co-founder of MDCapsule, Dr. Nathalie Majorek, about what she is doing at MDCapsule to succeed in an increasingly competitive segment of the healthcare landscape. 
So Dr Majorek relayed some concepts that more companies need to adopt to be successful:
- Think like a patient, not like search vendor, database vendor, cloud vendor, etc. Patients who want to access a healthcare portal have specific needs for information and action, not just data. As a patient, its nice to see my red blood cell count. But I also want to know what it means when I’m outside the normal range. Can I quickly ask my physician or a nurse advice on what to do?
- A patient portal doesn’t have to add a huge workload to doctors who are already under pressure to see lots of patients. As more doctors get paid on outcomes vs procedures, doctors should welcome greater patient engagement whether its in the office or online.
- Electronic medical records vendors don’t have a lock on patient portals. In the real world, patient data is spread out among several EMR systems. Current EMR vendors are great at pulling in data, but most won’t share data to other systems. A patient portal must be able to integrate with many vendors’ EMRs and other systems like billing, content, analytics, etc.
Innovation is alive and well in the healthcare portal space. Major vendors don’t have a lock on success and many new companies are being successful in satisfying consumer needs.
