Urologist develops software for specialty

A Springfield urologist has turned into an inventor for his trade.

Dr. Howard Follis of CoxHealth Ferrell-Duncan Clinic has created urology-specific electronic health records software.

“It allows physicians, urologists specifically, to document a patient’s medical records when they’re seen in the office or an ambulatory surgery center,” Follis said. “What it allows doctors to do, is to maintain their patients’ records from visit to visit in a legible way. And it also allows doctors to document the patients’ care much more accurately.”

Simple software concept
The concept behind the patient records software Follis developed was so simple, he could hardly believe it hadn’t been done.

Follis partnered with Springfield software company McMurtrey, Whitaker & Associates Inc. in January 2004 to design and develop his software, UroChartEHR. Follis founded Intuitive Medical Software LLC a year later with four employees, and it now employs 33.

Follis points to hiring Craig Frazier from McKesson Inc. as his president and CEO three years ago as a turning point for the company, which began selling the software in October 2006. A patent application has been submitted and is pending, said Follis, declining to disclose the amount of money invested in the product.

Of the 9,000 practicing urologists nationwide, Follis said 490 have bought or subscribed to the service at a cost of $7,000 to $12,000.

“We’ve been very gratified in our sales situations when we go head-to-head with some of these big generic companies that build what they call templates trying to retrofit a generic EHR to fit a specialty,” Follis said. “We have a win rate of more than 90 percent.”

If a urologist subscribes, five members of the doctor’s staff can participate.

“Everyone is certainly talking about electronic medical records these days. Patients, obviously, are very interested in their doctors using those e-records,” Follis said. “My approach, as a physician, is I’d like it to be useable to the doctor and valuable to the patient.”

Convinced of a need
There are about 200 electronic-record software vendors, Follis said, but most of the products target primary care physicians such as internal medicine, family physicians and pediatricians.

“I was just convinced there was a need in my specialty,” Follis said. “I wanted to build something that would work for all urologists.”

Doctors do have some financial incentive – the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 offers doctors $47,000 during a four-year period from 2011 through 2015 for switching to an e-record system, he said.

“That’s why there’s a big push right now. If you buy software now, you can receive stimulus funds,” Follis said.

Applying what has been learned developing UroChart to other specialties is next, Follis said.

“We actually are studying other specialties right now to see if other ‘best of breed’ exists or if we need to modify UroChart,” Follis said.

“We are in the process right now of looking at five other specialties pretty seriously to see if we need to modify UroChart.”

Follis said the term “best of breed” refers to existing programs that are applied to different specialties.  

Intuitive Medical Software has subscribers coast-to-coast, with the heaviest concentration in the Northeast, said Mary Guccione, marketing director. The West will be targeted in 2011.[[In-content Ad]]