Specialty practice EMR provider, Modernizing Medicine is partnering with IBM Watson to build a Watson-powered app called schEMA designed to help dermatologists offer optimized treatment options. The Boca Raton, FL based company was among three companies chosen for the IBM Watson Ecosystem program.
Today, One out of four dermatologists in the nation are using Modernizing Medicine’s Electronic Medical Assistant® (EMA™) iPad application to improve patient interaction and healthcare outcomes. The company is enhancing EMA by developing schEMA™, a powered by IBM Watson app designed to help doctors by answering medical questions at the point of care.
Utilizing cognitive computing and natural language processing, schEMA comprehends published healthcare information, such as peer-reviewed medical journals, to enable physicians to ask questions about conditions, treatments and outcomes and get back answers in seconds. The goal is to strengthen physician’s recommendations and enable them to efficiently practice evidence-based medicine. The company also provides EMA for the specialties of ophthalmology, plastic surgery, orthopedics and otolaryngology and is expanding into gastroenterology, urology and rheumatology. Modernizing Medicine was able to build a fully functional prototype in only two weeks with access to Watson and will be available to dermatologists that use its iPad app later this year.
“We are one of the first in the world to get access to this cognitive computing capability. This is an entirely new era of computing … where the machine is able to do a lot of that reasoning itself, and to understand the context of the question, what the possible answers in the known universe are and to instantaneously choose the best answer. It is almost mind boggling where this can lead. We aren’t taking the doctor out of the drivers seat. We are going to make Watson the ultimate research assistant and the ultimate collaborator to help determine a course of treatment,”said Dan Cane, co-founder and CEO of Modernizing Medicine (Dahlberg, Miami Herald, 5/16).
Founded in 2010, Modernizing Medicine, has more than 3,300 specialty physician practices across the country using its cloud based EMR systems. Unlike other EMR systems, EMA has pre-programmed medical and billing expertise built in. There are no templates or macros and EMA eliminates the doctor’s burden to bill each visit by hand and provides audit protection against claims of insurance fraud. Available as a native iPad application, or from any web-enabled Mac or PC, EMA’s touch-based system virtually eliminates the need for a keyboard. Employing 175 people, the company has quickly grown to $17.5 million in revenue in just three years.
