For those of you who know me, you may be asking why I started eRounds considering my long history in the medical device industry. The answer is simple – I saw an opportunity for healthcare enterprises and physicians to improve efficiencies and patient-centered care around the globe without increasing IT costs. To me it has been obvious there is a huge pool of healthcare companies and physicians who carry invaluable clinical expertise and knowledge around with them, yet they have no platform to effectively, efficiently share it with a broader community. I have witnessed this need countless times during my decades of experience in the medical device industry, but saw it up close and personal over the past two years as a patient. You see, having lived to the ripe old age of 5o I had never broken a bone. Since that milestone birthday, through dirt biking and adventure hiking, I’ve managed to break 4! And watching the painful (literally) process of surgeon-to-surgeon collaboration on MY images, it became abundantly clear that they needed a better way to share their knowledge. So, I’ve assembled a team of technology experts and recruited a world class Medical Advisory Board to solve the problem. We’ve been at this for about 2 years now and I believe what we will launch in October is going to disrupt just about everything healthcare professionals have come to accept in their attempt to share clinical insights. We have taken what has traditionally been cumbersome and complicated and made it is so simple.
Our mission is to transform the healthcare industry’s expectation of how medical knowledge is shared between those who have it and those who need it – all in the name of improving efficiencies and the quality of patient care. So how are we doing this? We have combined the power of social networking (like LinkedIn) and image sharing (Instagram) into a free healthcare-specific social collaboration platform for physicians and healthcare enterprises.
We believe that healthcare professionals have fallen for a promise made by hundreds of Electronic Medical Records technology providers that have proliferated over the past several years (due in large part to the money pumped into the market by the Federal Government). Part of that promise was for “seamless sharing of information” from one medical system to the next. It’s a great theory, but doesn’t take into consideration emerging trends in mobility and digitization. And it clearly doesn’t address the need for a passionate physician or surgeon to securely share a remarkable image of a patient case and collaborate with colleagues around that case. EMRs don’t enable residents to learn online from experts in their field.
We have discovered that frequently a physician only wants share or gain knowledge about a situation, pathology, or symptom… and not actual patient data. So, we started eRounds, and we are not another Electronic Medical Records system. In fact, by policy our platform contains no Protected Health Information whatsoever. eRounds is a tool to make collaboration (non-patient specific) easier. We’ve built a clinical collaboration and image sharing platform for physicians and healthcare enterprises who want to capture and share images with a broader peer-to-peer network in a secure, private community. To be clear, we take privacy and security very seriously and all images posted are de-identified using tools built into our platform. More about our security policy can be found here.
In addition to providing the foundation for global collaboration and image sharing, we work with healthcare enterprises such as Life Sciences corporations to deliver private eRounds communities . By building a robust, scalable, and secure platform for sharing medical images, education and training, we have developed a powerful tool that enables organizations to educate, train and communicate with their employees and stakeholders. They love eRounds and leverage our platform for their private use.
I’m asking you to join in the future development of our community, to share interesting cases and collaborate with expert peers. You can find groups that may interest you or form your own on the spot. We currently have a strong following in the area of spine images with surgeons and physicians in this area, but joining eRounds could be your first step in establishing you as the leader in your particular area of practice.
Finally, I’d like to specifically thank our early adopters who have helped us get the platform to where it is today. You’ve endured our bumps and twists and turns because you recognized the need for a tool like eRounds. I hope you remain thrilled with eRounds as the community grows and expands across other specialties. Thank you for your patience and all of your feedback.
If you have comments or questions for us, please reach me personally at d@erounds.com.
Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter (@team_erounds) and Facebook (Facebook.com/teamerounds) to keep up to date on what’s transpiring with eRounds and in the area of mobile health.