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HOME > ABOUT > PRESS > DEVELOPER OF SOFTWARE SEES GROWING DEMAND
Article published - February 25, 2008
Credit: Northbay Business Journal
Developer of software for patient tracking sees growing demand
AUTHOR
SANTA ROSA – Exploding demand for chronic disease tracking among health clinics has put i2i Systems into high gear.
The Santa Rosa software developer has quietly snowballed as the industry leader in the Western U.S., and health centers across the country are starting to hear about it.
Last week the 10-employee company moved into new Santa Rosa quarters twice the size of its original office in Wikiup, according to co-founder, President and CEO Janice Nicholson.
“We’ll be adding four or five new staff members initially, perhaps more in the fall depending on new orders,” she said.
Fueling i2i’s growth in California is a statewide initiative to build a registry of chronic disease sufferers, spearheaded by the California HealthCare Foundation. The CHCF is a major funder, along with federal agencies, of public health clinics.
Chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma, tuberculosis and cardiovascular disease are estimated to cost the U.S. $1 trillion a year in lost productivity, a number expected to jump to $6 trillion to $7 trillion by mid-century.
“By 2010, more than half the U.S. population will suffer from a chronic illness,” said Ms. Nicholson.
Many of the victims are uninsured and low-income. When their conditions become acute, they often are treated in emergency rooms and require hospitalization.
Ms. Nicholson, a long-time developer of software for community health centers, saw a need for managed care.
“If you keep track of them, let them know when it’s time for a checkup or particular treatment, their diseases rarely get out of control. But health care centers see thousands of patients. Letting someone know when his eyes should be checked, or a woman know when a pap test or mammogram is overdue, is almost impossible.”
She and her co-founder Jason Luders wrote a tracking system called i2i Tracks that resides on a central server and is accessed through PCs. It’s customizable to a particular center’s needs, depending on the medical profile of most of its patients.
Data is entered at the time of each visit, and the system is interoperable with the center’s other data systems and those of laboratories and pharmacies.
In the North Bay alone, the i2i software tracks chronic patients for the Southwest Community Health Center in Santa Rosa, the West County Health Center in Guerneville, Clinical Ole in Napa, the Sonoma Valley and Alexander Valley health care centers and the ARCH consortia in Mendocino.
“Before we got the i2i system in 2004 we were trying to use a stand-alone program given out free by the government,” said Chris Stewart, a nurse-practitioner and director of clinical systems improvement for the Southwest center.
“It wasn’t easily accessible and didn’t interoperate with anything. Most tracking was done manually in a spreadsheet,” he said.
Now Southwest is able to manage care for 700 – rather than 70 – diabetes patients, 500 cardiovascular patients and thousands of pap and mammogram candidates. All six of its sites are on the i2i system, so a patient can visit any one of them.
“We have to report regularly to federal agencies on 15 different measures, and our level of care has improved steadily. In some areas we don’t see the level of improvement we want, and then we focus our attention there. Before using the tracking system, knowing where to focus was a shot in the dark,” said Mr. Stewart.
The i2i systems cost approximately $40,000 to $70,000, depending on the number of users, with an 18 percent annual maintenance fee.
Because results of chronic disease tracking are measurable and dramatic, the CHCF – along with Blue Shield, the California Endowment and other health funding groups – has launched a Chronic Disease Registry project to help equip all federally-approved health centers with systems like i2i’s.
“We believe that only 50 percent of chronic disease sufferers are getting the care they need,” said Jan Eldred, a senior program officer for the CHCF’s Better Chronic Disease Care program.
Over the next two years, the funding collaborative will disburse about $4 million to $5 million in matching grants for centers to purchase chronic disease-tracking software.
“Planned, managed care, which is possible with tracking systems, is very, very effective,” said Ms. Eldred.
As the leading provider of the systems in the state, i2i can look forward to equipping all or most of the 180 federally approved clinics in the state that receive funding.
Health care foundations in other states will most likely follow California’s initiative, and Ms. Nicholson and Mr. Luders are beginning to attend industry events outside the Western U.S., where they now sell 70 percent of the i2i systems.
A recent event in the Midwest resulted in 15 health centers in Iowa and Nebraska adapting the i2i system.
The company’s revenues have grown steadily during the last two years, from $1 million to $3 million.
“We didn’t go into this for the money, and we’ve never taken investment capital, so it’s gratifying to see the growth,” said Ms. Nicholson. “Profits aside, it’s wonderful to be able to make such a huge difference with just a software program”
The lease on i2i’s new 3,158-square-foot headquarters on North Laughlin Road was arranged by Paul Schwartz of Colliers International representing i2i, and Schwartz and Preston Smith of Orion Partners representing the landlord, Cornerstone Properties.
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