baran's comments

healthfinch (www.healthfinch.com/careers) - Madison, WI

Healthcare is unnecessarily complex, healthfinch aims to fix that. We do so by building applications that seamlessly integrate into electronic health record systems to automate pieces of the physician’s day. Our award-winning tool, Swoop has significant traction, but we are not resting on our laurels. Instead, we are quickly building out three additional applications and the platform we need to support them.

Software Engineer - Remote, Onsite

Join our modest development team and change the way the health care industry works! We’re scaling to more customers, integrating with a broad range of medical systems, and building out capabilities that will impact the day-to-day lives of thousands of doctors, nurses, and other heath care practitioners.

We work with Ruby and Javascript on our current apps, but believe in the philosophy of using the best tool for the job.

Lead UX Designer - Remote, Onsite

At healthfinch, we’re looking for a passionate, talented and experienced Lead UX Designer who can help us optimize our flagship application while guiding the aesthetics, functions and experience of our new suite of applications. Our Lead UX Designer will work closely with our Engineering, Customer Success, Sales and Marketing staff to understand the complex healthcare IT landscape, our vision for our future products and most importantly, the needs of the customers.

You are a strong candidate for healthfinch if you have deep experience in UX design/research and can demonstrate an ability to take an application from concept to market. You must be a gifted communicator who is able to solicit meaningful feedback from clients and can, in turn, prioritize feedback with staff to incorporate it into our product roadmap. You understand that great product design is a result of intense collaboration, multiple iterations, patience and persistence.

healthfinch, Software Engineer - Madison, WI - [email protected]

Join our modest development team and change the way the health care industry works! We’re scaling to more customers, integrating with a broad range of medical systems, and building out capabilities that will impact the day-to-day lives of thousands of doctors, nurses, and other heath care practitioners. We work with Ruby and Javascript on our current apps, but believe in the philosophy of using the best tool for the job.

Minimum Requirements - A minimum of 3 years experience working as an application developer or software engineer - Interest in working with a small development team at a start-up - Proficient oral and written communication skills History of collaborating well with other developers and stakeholders - Experience with modern web development including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - Knowledge of SQL and modern RDBMSs like Postgres, Mysql, SQL Server - A good understanding of MVC design patterns - An interest in perfecting the practice of healthcare through more usable IT!

Bonus Points for These Skills - git, Ruby (or other dynamic language), Ruby on Rails, RESTful web service, development JavaScript, RSpec, Cucumber, jQuery, Cache and MUMPS - A GitHub profile you can send us

healthfinch, Software Engineer - Madison, WI

Join our modest development team and change the way the health care industry works! We’re scaling to more customers, integrating with a broad range of medical systems, and building out capabilities that will impact the day-to-day lives of thousands of doctors, nurses, and other heath care practitioners.

We work with Ruby and Javascript on our current apps, but believe in the philosophy of using the best tool for the job.

Minimum Requirements - A minimum of 3 years experience working as an application developer or software engineer - Interest in working with a small development team at a start-up - Proficient oral and written communication skills History of collaborating well with other developers and stakeholders - Experience with modern web development including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - Knowledge of SQL and modern RDBMSs like Postgres, Mysql, SQL Server - A good understanding of MVC design patterns - An interest in perfecting the practice of healthcare through more usable IT!

Bonus Points for These Skills - git, Ruby (or other dynamic language), Ruby on Rails, RESTful web service, development JavaScript, RSpec, Cucumber, jQuery, Cache and MUMPS - A GitHub profile you can send us

Healthfinch - Software Engineer

Madison, WI

We’re looking to add software engineers to our modest development team to help us scale to more customers, integrate with a broad range of medical systems, and build out capabilities that will fundamentally change the way the heath care industry works. We work with Ruby on existing apps, but believe in the philosophy of using the best tool for the job.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS & COMPETENCIES: - A minimum of 3 years experience working as an application developer or software engineer - Interest in working with a small development team at a start-up - The willingness to identify projects, dive in head first with minimal supervision and see them through to completion - Strong communication skills - Strong experience with modern web development including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - A good understanding of MVC design patterns - Knowledge of SQL and Relational Database Systems - A passion for perfecting the practice of healthcare through IT

BONUS: - Experience working with: - git - Ruby - JavaScript - RSpec - Cucumber - Ruby on Rails - jQuery - .NET (SQLServer, C#, MVC) - Cache and MUMPS - A GitHub profile you can send us - Located in Madison

Visit www.healthfinch.com/jobs for more information.

Healthfinch (http://www.healthfinch.com)

Location: Madison, WI or REMOTE

We are hiring: Software engineers, Front-end engineer, and a Head of Engineering.

Healthcare is unnecessarily complex, and at healthfinch we are here to fix that. We do this by building applications that seamlessly integrate into the electronic medical record system to automate pieces of the physician's day. Our award-winning tool, RefillWizard, has significant traction (and growth) in the market. However, we are not resting on our laurels. Instead, we are quickly building out three additional applications, along with the platform that will be needed to support them.

We work with Ruby on Rails on existing apps, but believe in the philosophy of using the best tool for the job.

More more information: http://www.healthfinch.com/jobs

If interested email [email protected]

The problem is Epic has effectively locked-in the top end of the market. Their strategy, which is brilliant, is to only go after the biggest, most well-known clients (I know nothing groundbreaking, but it works). They say they only focus on whales, academics, and children (hospitals). Due to this, they have been able to capture 265 of the most prestigious hospitals in the country (and soon in the world). With the lock-in they have, I can't see them giving up this market. It would take a lot to justify replacing that half a billion dollar system for someone else, especially after the hell the administrators have gone through to get the systems up in the first place. Also, in many ways Epic is becoming the de-facto standard, which is leading to network effects that would have to be broken down. I don't think you can fight Epic at their game and win.

Added to that they will likely begin to move downstream (recently heard a rev. projection $8.4B in 2016, up from $1.2B today) as the mid-size players would love to have an Epic install if only to mimic the respected healthcare organizations.

The most secure place from Epic is the small practices. The IT/intemplmentation/costs requirements of Epic are far too high, in its current form, to sell to them. The problem becomes selling. It recently talked with a VP of Sales at a HIT vendor and he said of 10 hours spent selling a doctor, 9 hours are spent trying to get a hold of him. Difficult.

Madison, WI - Web Application Designer - healthfinch.com

We are also looking for a excellent web application designer to add to our team.

At Healthfinch you will be working in healthcare, an industry which is in desperate need of a design revolution. In fact, that's why we founded Healthfinch because we believe good design can make all the difference. You will be designing applications and experiences through tools which add-on to the electronic medical record. Our focus is on making lives easier for clinicians and better for patients. It's as simple as that. This could include everything from designing a new portion of our existing application (http://www.refillwizard.com), coding your new designs, tightening up the copy, creating marketing pages to better convey what we are about, doing a little client work (implementation), or maybe even working in the sales process. We are going to be expecting a lot of our designers, so make sure your up to the challenge!

If you think your up to the challenge send something to jobs at healthfinch.com that proves it. This can be application designs, mockups, copy, or anything else that your proud of (don't be shy!).

When using multiple textures on a page, how can you effectively transition from one to another?

I have seen the linear gradient close to the edge (creating the turned-under effect), but that seems overdone. Other ideas?

Healthcare products can generally fall into two categories (1) the game-changing technology and (2) everything else.

#1 above will sell itself (think implantable glucose monitor).

#2 will sell well if it solves one of the top three problems the organization is facing.

IMHO, the "bottom-up" approach is the game-changer in the enterprise market.

With the freemium model, software can be basically given to the user; then, ASSUMING you have a strong product, that person will become your promoter within the organization. Get to the CIO through that user, if they are not enough keep building critical mass. Eventually the CIO will listen.

Right now, the enterprise has mis-alignment with the buyer and the user. Whatever can be done to bring that into proper alignment will in the end benefit the user.

"The EMR is dead." - Lyle Berkowitz, MD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSVIAG11OXM&feature=playe...

EMRs were originally built for data legibility, ordering, patient continuity of data (OK, we still dont have this), and better financial tracking. The large EMR vendors have largely already created this functionality, but to an interesting conclusion - the realized value was not nearly as great as the perceived value. As a result, the opportunity for startups is NOT to built a better mousetrap! For the foreseable future docs are going to be stuck with Epic, like it or not. The perceived value of a "better" EMR is not strong enough for institutions to adopt your software. You can only sell on that failed promise once.

The opportunity IMHO lies in small applications that solve the problems of docs (or nurses). Pick a niche market (primary care, ortho, peds, nursing, etc.), talk to them, find their pain points, and build software that makes it easier.

Dilbert Link: http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=confusopoly&x=0&y...

Your confusing # of prices with the simplicity of the pricing scheme. With Apple, I can justify to myself why I'm paying more for a product (eg. size increase, 3G). With the NYTimes, its hard to justify why I should pay more for (1) a digital copy and (2) the same content on different platforms.

Although the medical iPad market appears compelling, I feel it's a bit of false hope for the industry. The problem was never the hardware - its always been the software.

With all the money being pumped into the industry we've created digital repositories of the paper records. Well now what do we do? In a perfect world we could share data between providers, maintain centralized records, etc. which would cut down costs and improve care. Although this appears trivial, data transfer in this industry is far from a reality.

The solution is software that actually solves a problem physicians are facing. Think this is difficult? Primary care physicians spent upwards of 50% of their day on non-patient care. These tasks include medication refills, referrals, evaluating labs, etc. The kicker the majority of this work could be outsourced to a computer - and your physician would be glad you did.

Aza is correct. The fundamental problem inhibiting good personal health is lack of timely feedback. In healthcare, feedback always happens too late. The beer I drink tonight doesn't affect me until my liver fails. Overeating doesn't become a problem until your are stuck in a vicious cycle.

With that said, for the majority of the healthy population, the main indicator of health is weight. Thus for the personal health space, the holy grail is a device which automatically measures the caloric input/output. When I say automatic, I really mean automatic. No writing/taking pictures/tweeting about your food or exercise. Think a watch that tells you how many more calories you can eat in the day. Anything more complicated will fail.

Aza does point out an example population which would be assisted by better technology - individuals with chronic health problems. These people are faced with their disease everyday, whether they want to think about it or not, so they have the most to gain from new technology. There is a niche in improving the "diabetes diary", but in my mind the real power comes from a complete feedback loop. One which encourages care providers (physicians, nurses, etc.) to be more involved in managing their conditions. Think about giving your diabetes diary to your physician. Patterns would emerge for the physicians that would not be seen by the patient. This data could then be the catalyst for change in how the patient manages their disease.

The problem right now is that no personal health system exists with connects patients and providers. The data which resides in your medical record is locked into proprietary systems which are vary reluctant to "open" data. However, the landscape is beginning to change. Industry is realizing a the game-changing health applications need the underlying data which is being housed in clinical institutions to function optimally. Check out SMArt Platforms if your interested in this push.

Summary

Be very careful in the personal health space. Two things I've learned after being in the industry for a while (1) it's very difficult to get people to care enough about their health to take action on it and (2) the most useful applications are the ones which connect patients and care providers which is difficult due to lack of data liquidity.

I think its less of a friendship issue and more of the ability to "get" each other.

My co-founder and I have been working for almost 1.5 years on our startup. We have gone through so many iterations, we can see into each others minds. When an issue comes up, I know exactly what he is thinking and vis-versa. This ability is invaluable during negotiations, meetings, etc.

I don't think of us being on a friendship level, but its something greater. Its been said, its almost like your married to your co-founder - an analogy which is pretty much true. Your futures are tied together.

If my startup is a running back, I feel like I'm Barry Sanders.

I'm involved in the healthcare (EMR) space. I might be able to give some useful feedback.

EMRs are a difficult product for lean-startups b/c Docs are always pretty busy. That being said there are techie docs which like to discuss the latest and greatest. Have you come across any avenues to reach a broad range of physicians? ImedicalApps (imedicalapps.com) is a pretty good site for this. I have done some guest blogging on their site.

If your in Madison WI look us up. We're HealthFinch, info in bio.

I'm interested. Email is in profile, let me know what you are thinking.