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HIMSS09 – Tee Green, President – Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc.

Greenway’s flagship software solution is PrimeSuite 2008, is an integrated electronic medical record (EMR), practice management (PM) and interoperability solution that is certified by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT®) based on 08 Ambulatory EHR (electronic health record) certification requirements, including certification for cardiovascular medicine and child health. With over 1,800 customer sights nationally, 4,600 physician users in over 30 medical specialties and subspecialties, Greenway is a leader in health information technology (HIT). Specialty specific content within PrimeSuite 2008 EMR includes: Allergy, Cardiology, ENT, Family Medicine, Gastroenterology, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, OB/GYN, Orthopedics, Pediatrics, Plastic Surgery, Rheumatology, and more.

Category: EHR Press, Featured
Date: August 8, 2009
Views:9,183 views
Information: Green discusses PrimeExchange - an interoperability engine that allows seamless data exchange between your medical practice, other medical practices and hospitals, as well as the entire healthcare and stakeholder community. In addition, Green acknowledges the importance of security and efficiency throughout the data exchange process with in the electronic medical records (EMR) industry. PrimeResearch is also discussed. PrimeResearch is the first research portal of its kind in the health information technology (HIT) industry. The mission of Greenway's PrimeResearch product is to be at the conversion of clinical research and the medical providers.

Dr. Eric Fishman: Hello from Chicago, Illinois at HIMSS09. This is Dr. Eric Fishman for EHRtv and today we have the pleasure of speaking with Tee Green, President of Greenway Medical Technologies. Tee?

Tee Green: Eric, thank you.

Dr. Eric Fishman: If you could tell us, Greenway has a wonderful name and reputation in the industry and if you could tell us a little bit about how you started the company.

Tee Green: Right. Well, we started the company back in '98 to build an infrastructure for physicians to assist in the deployment of electronic health records. Today, Greenway has 300 employees, we have 1,000 customers around the country and about 30 different specialties.

Dr. Eric Fishman: Those 1,000 customers probably represent more than 1,000 physicians I would imagine.

Tee Green: Yes, probably around 5,000 physicians today.

Dr. Eric Fishman: That's a good base of installed physicians.

Tee Green: It's a good start.

Dr. Eric Fishman: Now, you've had quite a lot of news that came out of HIMSS, you've got some interesting information on research but let's start with the interoperability because you're featured at the interoperability IHE showcase.

Tee Green: Right.

Dr. Eric Fishman: Tell us a little bit about that initiative.

Tee Green: Our PrimeExchange service is part of our original physician's infrastructure and recognizing the fact that if you deploy electronic health records into practices around the country, how are you going to connect those practices to hospitals, to disease registries, to lab companies, to regional health information organizations? We recognize that as being a real challenge for the industry. Most of the industry is focused on doing point to point interfaces which creates tremendous complexity for the vendor from a security standpoint, from an efficiency standpoint.

So we launched a service called PrimeExchange. It's a centralized messaging server that routes data from our customers, two third parties from third parties back to our customers securely and efficiently. So if you look at a lab company, we may have hundreds of installations with a specific lab company but only have one connection point to that lab organization. And that infrastructure sits behind my security infrastructure

Dr. Eric Fishman: That's pretty impressive. I was speaking with your staff over at the IHE booth yesterday and they indicated that it's actually working, that this isn't something happening tomorrow, this is actually functioning today.

Tee Green: Absolutely. We have thousands and thousands of transactions that flow through this information exchange every day.

Dr. Eric Fishman: And so when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 says that a physician has to have a certified EHR and you're obviously there, and it needs to be able to be used in a meaningful fashion, a meaningful use, it certainly seems to me as if you've passed that qualification.

Tee Green: Well, we don't know but we think so. We'll know at the end of '09 whether we passed meaningful use but to be in our space, we had to guarantee that our customers will be able to participate in meaningful use obviously.

Dr. Eric Fishman: Certainly.

Tee Green: And a key piece of that we believe will be interoperability.

Dr. Eric Fishman: I think so.

Tee Green: Which is why PrimeExchange is so important.

Dr. Eric Fishman: Now, could you just spend a couple moments talking about your research capability. I understand you're quite robust.

Tee Green: Well, PrimeResearch is the first research portal of its kind in the industry. And essentially, the mission behind PrimeResearch is to be at the convergence of clinical research and our providers. And if you know anything about research today - the research world and the provider world - there's a vast ocean or body of water in between those two.

But to improve population health in this country, we're going to have to merge, or at least bridge, those two entities. If you look at research today, only about four percent of physicians participate in clinical research. That means 96 percent of caregivers treat patients and obviously, treating patients is critical but what happens to the information? Why can't that information be shared, explored and researched for future generations? PrimeResearch is the first portal that allows that to happen.

So our customers who have never done research before can find clinical trials, can find evidence-based medical studies, post market surveillance and connect their patients into these registries. Eventually, they'll get better information back from the researchers, maybe even drugs available for their patients and at the end of the day, we improve population health.

Dr. Eric Fishman: And when your next customer approaches your product tomorrow, they have that available to them?

Tee Green: They have that available to them.

Dr. Eric Fishman: Tee, pleasure. Thank you.

Tee Green: Thank you, Eric.