Announcing the Winner of the Practice Fusion Healthcare API Challenge

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The winner of the Practice Fusion API Challenge is demoing live today on the Health 2.0 Conference main stage. The team of three engineers from Critical Systems (CritSys), an Ohio-based IT consultant company, was selected from over 30 entries for their standout work in creating an innovative, affordable solution connecting patient-reported data to Practice Fusion's health management platform. With over 40,000 medical providers and 5 million patients, the Practice Fusion platform is emerging as a key testing ground for innovations in participatory medicine.

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"Connected, information-driven medicine has the potential to help millions of people better manage their health and reduce costs, even save lives," said Matthew Douglass, Vice President of Product Development at Practice Fusion. "Using affordable and effective tools to help keep patients out of the hospital is precisely what the winner of the Practice API challenge has accomplished."

The Practice Fusion API Challenge Winner:

• Team Critical Systems, led by Peter Gordon, Kevin Lawrence and Rob Reasons, modified an inexpensive bathroom scale to connect real-time weight values to Practice Fusion. They also created a synch connection that lets HealthVault data and medical devices flow to Practice Fusion's health management platform.
• Use case: A doctor prescribes an affordable scale for a patient with congestive heart failure (CHF) through an app market on Practice Fusion's EMR system. The patient weighs in daily with the value automatically reporting online. Through a secure connection, the doctor and patient track the values within the EMR and PHR, looking for jumps in weight that signal dangerous condition changes.
• Watch the team's entry video showcasing the live connectivity between devices and systems.

The Critical Systems team received a $2,500 cash prize, tickets to Health Innovation Week events and an invitation to demo live at the Health 2.0 Conference today. They will also have the opportunity to develop their live feature into a robust system for the Practice Fusion community. Practice Fusion also selected two finalists and six honorable mention awards from over 30 API Challenge teams:

API Challenge Finalists

• Razoron – Health platform using Open Mobile Health Exchange (OMHE) commands, medical devices and RAZCODE barcodes for structured health information reporting. Razoron created a vision for interoperability between different health systems using data standardization.
• BodyTrace – An eScale using GSM technology to transmit values from the scale through the cellular networks. BodyTrace created a platform for weight loss through feedback and monitoring.

API Challenge Honorable Mentions

• The Fusioners – Management platform for chronic healthcare conditions
• HealthCentral – Mood 24/7 is an SMS and web-based mood-tracking platform
• RegisterPatient.com, Inc. – Web-based patient registration, insurance verification and referral system
• mHealthBridge–Mobile care application for pregnancy and parents of young infants
• AdhereTx –  Web-based and mobile solution for medication management, focusing on seniors with chronic diseases
• VisiHealth – Longitudinal tracking of health values using HTML5

Details of the Practice Fusion API Challenge are available for review online. The competition was part of the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge, a program for health innovation supported by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Learn more about the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge.

About Practice Fusion

Practice Fusion provides a free, web-based Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system to physicians. With charting, scheduling, e-prescribing, billing, lab integrations, referral letters, unlimited support and a Personal Health Record for patients, Practice Fusion's EMR addresses the complex needs of today's healthcare providers and disrupts the health IT status quo. Practice Fusion is the fastest growing EMR community in the country with more than 40,000 users. For more information on Practice Fusion, please visit www.practicefusion.com.

About Health 2.0

The Health 2.0 Conference is the leading showcase of cutting-edge technologies in health care, including online communities, search and lightweight tools for consumers to manage their health and connect to providers online. Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya collaborated to organize the first Health 2.0 Conference in September 2007 in San Francisco. Health 2.0 has been featured in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Huffington Post, on CNN, CBS News, and in the healthcare trade press. The Washington Post called the conference " . . . a high-energy gathering of great minds . . . ." Now many conferences on, Health 2.0 has become the place to see and be seen for the leaders in health care technology. But above all Health 2.0 remains a venue where innovation in technology is introduced and ground-breaking ideas are shared to drive change in the health care system.

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Matt Douglass

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SOURCE Practice Fusion