SAN FRANCISCO and SEATTLE, Sept. 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- GenieMD, a Silicon Valley based, global provider of mobile healthcare solutions, announced today the company's first place finish in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's (ONC) Blue Button Co-Design Challenge. The purpose of the challenge was to engage developers and patients to increase the number of priority patient-facing applications able to receive clinical data via Blue Button Direct. GenieMD developed an app that helps users diagnose symptoms, find nearby providers, or learn more about medical conditions and living healthy. The secure GenieMD Health Profile includes features to create a comprehensive health summary, help manage treatment, and monitor the health of a loved one.

"We are very excited to be chosen as the winner of the ONC Blue Button Co-Design Challenge. The opportunity to work directly with patients to understand their pain points was invaluable. We believe that the combination of providing patient's access to data using Blue Button Direct and the GenieMD feature set creates a powerful patient engagement tool," said Tory Kelso, VP of Market Strategy and Business Development at GenieMD.

GenieMD users can now automatically add their medical records to their health profile using Blue Button Direct. The records from Blue Button+ are sent in a machine-readable format, allowing the app to parse the data and present it to the patient in an actionable way. The need for manual data entry is reduced and the user can combine clinical data with self-reported data to have a holistic view of their health.

"We launched the patient Co-Design Challenge by crowdsourcing the priority ways that patients and caregivers want to use their Blue Button health data.  We heard loud and clear that it can be extremely challenging to keep track of – not to mention keep up with – your healthcare when you have a complex illness or many different conditions, but accessing and better understanding personal health data could help. The winning product wowed both our judging panel and the thousands of people who participated in crowd voting," said Rebecca Mitchell Coelius, MD, ONC's medical officer for innovation.

GenieMD's objective is to empower consumers to take a more active role in their healthcare, with a particular focus on supporting individuals with chronic conditions, those on multiple medications, and those who see multiple providers.  These patients and their families are often left solely responsible for coordinating care, and adhering to treatment plans outside of the doctor's office or hospital.

Chronic disease impacts not only the health of the patient and their families, but it has a broader impact on communities and the economy.  The CDC reports nearly half of adults in the United States have at least one chronic illness and chronic disease is responsible for more than 75 percent of the more than $2.5 trillion spent annually on healthcare.

Blue Button is a movement for patients to have electronic access to their health and healthcare system related data. Blue Button Direct is part of the portfolio of standards and policies that enable this data access. BlueButtonPlus.org

About GenieMD

At GenieMD our mission is to help improve the quality of human life by providing solutions that enable people to live healthier and longer. We are developers and healthcare information technology veterans who are passionate about technology, and helping people easily access healthcare services, live well and take care of their loved ones. We use all that is new in medical & computer science to build intuitive, comprehensive and easy to use solutions.

Tory Kelso, VP of Market Strategy and Business Development
torykelso@genieMD.com
Office: 925-460-9191

SOURCE GenieMD