Epocrates, perhaps trying to capitalize on its success in apps for smartphones, moved into the physician office EHR space. Commenting on this new product, I raised questions about its close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry: could Big Pharma be trusted as a business partner positioned in such close proximity to physician office records (see: Ethical Questions Raised about the New Physician Office EMR from Epocrates)? It appears now that the company is withdrawing from the EHR market (see: Epocrates abandons EHR initiative, shelving native iPad app)
...Epocrates officials were [recently] showing off an iPad version of their new electronic health record at the HIMSS12 Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas....Now comes word that the San Mateo, Calif.-based company is abandoning plans to roll out its certified EHR to focus on its mobile clinical tools for physicians. Company officials announced ...that they’re ending the two-year-old project and plan to either sell the EHR assets or find a business partner.... In its Feb. 28 announcement, Epocrates reported a net loss of $3.6 million in 2011, including $6.5 million in the fourth quarter. The company had lost $3.8 million in 2010, but had posted net income of $2.7 million for the last quarter of that year...."Epocrates' success this year will be defined by our ability to realize the full potential of our physician network – more than 340,000 strong,” [the interim president and chief executive officer] concluded. “Our primary focus will be to strengthen our position of trust with physicians, based on value, which in turn will drive enhanced commercialization opportunities for our business." In an interview last week..., Epocrates Chief Medical Information Officer Thomas Gianulli....said the company couldn’t sustain both its EHR business and its core reference tools business without suffering some loss of quality. Gianulli said the EHR product still needed some work to entice buyers looking to qualify for Stage 2 of the federal government’s meaningful use provisions. “It wasn’t feature-complete yet,” he said.
All of this is very interesting. The office EHR market is getting crowded with Practice Fusion as a formidable rival (see: Practice Fusion CEO Calls His Company the Largest EMR Provider). However, this latter company has also been facing some ethical challenges, given the fact that its free version is supported by advertisements and also assumes ownership of the anonymized patient data contained in the records (see: Practice Fusion Supported by Advertising and Owns Anonymized Data). Note the quote from the Epocrates president and CEO above: “Our primary focus will be to strengthen our position of trust with physicians, based on value, which in turn will drive enhanced commercialization opportunities for our business."
Let's look at the scenario facing the company regarding whether to tough it out with its new EHR. On the one hand, the company has a popular smartphone app that has exploded into a broad set of physician services such as drug sample ordering and literature and an "Honors Panel" that connects "partners worldwide" with the Epocrates physician network to conduct market research into timely healthcare issues. These Epocrates sservices must surely look very appealing to the pharmaceutical industry that can no longer count on a large sales staff to call on physician offices and is placing most of its bets on e-detailing and e-sampling (see: How E-Detailing May Lead to Greater Knowledge by Physicians about Drugs; E-Sampling: Another Blow to the Future of Pharma Sales Reps; Limitations Placed on Big Pharma Facebook Pages). From where I sit, Epocrates now looks like a very lucrative marketing arm for the pharmaceutical industry with no significant competitors on the horizon.
Contrast this with the company decision to withdraw from the office EHR market which is highly competitive and also highly regulated by the federal government. Moreover, it's possible that a business model of selling ads for EHRs and anonymized data to the pharmaceutical industry has the risk of later blowback, hurting the physician trust which the company requires for its primary line of business, smartphone physician apps.
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