Electronic medical records get a boost from iPad, federal funding

The iPad may help electronic medical records (EMR, sometimes also referred to as electronic health records, or EHR) finally gain wide adoption, thanks in part to a new program that will see the federal government dispersing grants to doctors who make use of a free native EMR iPad app.

Drchrono announced Thursday that doctors who use their EMR app to store and track patient data will receive up to $44,000 in incentives. The federal subsidies are now accessible to medical professionals because drchrono has been certified for “Meaningful Use,” making it the only app of its kind to receive such certification so far. Meaningful use is a designation used by the government to describe EHR tech that meets a set of criteria that use can be accurately measured in qualifiable and quantifiable terms.

The certification could be a good first step towards finally arriving at an EMR solution that will actually have broad appeal. Drchrono CEO and co-founder Michael Nusimow describes his app’s advantages in this regard:

This certification transforms our EHR app and the iPad into a potentially affordable platform that could finally drive global usage and adoption of Electronic Medical Records. The government subsidy offered to physicians who adopt our free EHR solution could be transformational in bringing electronic record keeping into every medical practice.

EHR adoption still faces considerable challenges. There are major privacy concerns surrounding the tech for many patients, and the cost of initial conversion of records can be high. That’s why drchrono being offered free (albeit with different tiered monthly service packages ranging from free to $799 per month, coupled with monetary adoption incentives is so promising. Also, government certification should help to allay some privacy concerns.

What do you think? Would you be happy to see your family doctor carrying an iPad instead of a clipboard?

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3 PaaS lessons from CloudBees’ funding

I’ve been following Java-centric Platform-as-a-Service startup CloudBees for a while now, so I wasn’t too surprised when I learned it had closed a $10.5 million Series B funding round. PaaS is a white-hot space in terms of developer and VC interest, but it’s also very competitive. Thus far, however, CloudBees has demonstrated an impressive strategy for differentiation.

Other PaaS startups might want to pay attention:

Be specialized. And I don’t mean just support a single language, I mean support a single language and have some serious talent to lead the development charge. As I noted when covering CloudBees’ $4 million Series A round late last year, it includes many former JBoss executives and developers among its team, and JBoss founder Marc Fleury is among its investors. If you’re going to do Java, there are worse guys to have on your side.

We’ve seen this tactic deployed by numerous other PaaS startups, too. Heroku recently brought on Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto to lead development of its flagship language, and Joyent now employs Node.js creator Ryan Dahl.

The future of PaaS might be multi-language/framework, as Heroku’s recent support for Node.js and Clojure, as well as VMware Cloud Foundry and DotCloud, illustrate, but single-language will still work. It just has to be done well.

Be inclusive. I mean this in terms of both products and potential user base. CloudBees supports Java developers throughout the application life cycle with two distinct offerings: DEV@cloud, serves up the Jenkins (nee Hudson) development platform as a service, and RUN@cloud, which is CloudBees’ production application runtime environment.

Furthermore, CloudBees has expanded the number of infrastructure options its service can run on to include OpenStack and VMware vSphere in addition to the original Amazon Web Services support. This is a big deal because whereas many PaaS offerings are relegated to running atop a single IaaS cloud, CloudBees users can choose between different public clouds, or even can run the service as software in-house on private cloud infrastructure.

Be first. Here’s the other thing about CloudBees: It wasn’t the first PaaS provider to focus on Java, nor was it the first to offer its service as software that can run on multiple environments. But, as far as I know, it was to first to market with both capabilities.

Already in talks to merge with Java PaaS pioneer Stax Networks, CloudBees sped up the culmination of that deal in late-November after Red Hat bought the JBoss-based Makara. Stax’s service was already running, so CloudBees was able to offer a product earlier than initially expected, while working in the background to integrate its technology. In June, it rolled out a Premium version of RUN@cloud to complement its free version enhanced features.

All of this happened while other Java-based platforms such as VMforce still look like vaporware and Google is still tweaking its enterprise-friendly App Engine with full Java support. Another startup, CumuLogic, is doing PaaS software that can run atop a variety of infrastructure options, but it’s still in beta. Red Hat, too, took its time to productize the Makara platform as OpenShift, which was only recently released in Developer Preview phase.

Of course, it also helps to be a quality platform. CloudBees recently fared well against Google App Engine and Amazon Elastic Beanstalk in a third-party review of Java PaaS offerings.

None of this is to say that CloudBees is or will be the premier Java PaaS provider. Just that it’s not surprising to see it attracting investors’ money.

Image courtesy of Flickr user yomanimus

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CX funding shows cloud storage startups are still hot

Judging by the latest news out of startup cloud-storage provider CX, heavyweight investors are still bullish about newcomers to the space. CX announced on Thursday that it has closed on a Series B funding round worth $5 million led by Eric Schmidt’s venture capital firm TomorrowVentures, bringing its total VC investment to $10 million.

Also on Thursday, CX said it has acquired its competitor FileDen for an undisclosed sum. The deal brings CX’s user base to more than 3.5 million, the company said.

CX, which stands for “Cloud Experience,” bills itself as an open storage platform that platform overlays users’ social graphs to enable collaboration with anyone on any Internet-connected device. The company is most often compared to storage services like Dropbox and Box.net. CX claims it is differentiated from its peers by having better searching and sharing capabilities along with data visualization features.

CX is currently free, but it plans to launch paid product plans later this summer that will charge consumers about $10 per month and developers $40 per month.

It has been clear for years now that cloud storage technology is hot — tech industry giants such as Amazon, Google and, most recently, Apple have made big moves into the area — and CX is looking to ride that wave. According to CEO Brad Robertson, CX is currently in discussions to close on $50 million in series C funding early this fall.

Along with TomorrowVentures, CX is backed by Hanna Capital, Clarington Capital, and Clearwater Capital.

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VC funding for web reaches 10 year high

Venture capital investments continued to grow at a rapid clip in the second quarter of 2011, with VC firms investing $7.5 billion across 966 deals, according to the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA.) But some industry experts are saying that the current level of VC activity could be too good to be sustained.

The second quarter of 2011 saw the highest total amount of money invested by VCs since the second quarter of 2008, according to the MoneyTree report released this week. Quarterly venture capital investment activity increased 19 percent during Q2 compared to the first quarter of 2011, during which VCs invested $6.3 billion in 814 deals (click on image to expand):

And if you think VCs have been putting a lot more money than usual into web startups, you’re absolutely right. Investments in Internet-specific companies rose to the highest quarterly level since 2001. Venture capital firms pumped $2.3 billion into 275 web-oriented companies during Q2 2011, a 72 percent increase in dollars and a 46 percent increase in such deals from the first quarter of the year:

Growth is normally a good thing for the venture capital ecosystem, but it may be starting to get out of hand. “This quarter’s increased investment levels signals an incredible opportunity for job creation and innovation, but if current dynamics continue, it will not be sustainable,” NVCA president Mark Heesen said in a release accompanying the MoneyTree report. “This level of investment cannot continue if we do not start to see a pick-up in exits and, subsequently, fundraising.”

Venture capital firms have had difficulty raising new funds for several years now. And while there is a lot of talk about the recent splashy exits such as LinkedIn’s blockbuster IPO, the fact is that the current return on investment is still not as high as many VCs — or their institutional investors — would like.

But for now, at least, it’s a good time to be building a venture-backed business. “Overall, the increase in investment levels in Q2 remains encouraging for entrepreneurs,” said PwC global managing partner Tracy T. Lefteroff. “At the current pace of venture capital investing, 2011 is on track to exceed $26 billion, which would put it as the sixth most active year in VC investing history.”

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