Emerging industry leader enables secure exchange of health data

Fort Wayne, Ind. – June 27, 2011 – As Google announces the company will retire its Google Health product, NoMoreClipboard (NMC), one of the leading personal health record (PHR) platforms in the U.S., reaffirms its commitment to the electronic exchange of consumer health information and the Direct Project protocol, an emerging open standard for efficient health data exchange.

"Google Health has been a great partner, and they have helped raise awareness of the value of personal health records," said Jeff Donnell, president of NoMoreClipboard. "We are sorry to see Google Health leave the personal health space at a time when patient engagement is gaining traction. While some see this as an indication that consumers are not yet ready to embrace PHRs, NoMoreClipboard is on track to more than quadruple its revenues and add several hundred thousand new users this year. While we have seen well over a hundred PHR players come and go in the last five years, we have managed to thrive."

"With the government's Direct Project initiatives in place and gaining traction, and with meaningful use standards calling for improved patient engagement, we and other like-minded organizations in the healthcare IT industry anticipate a strong future for personal health records."

Strategic Business Model

Like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, NoMoreClipboard started with a direct-to-consumer business model. "We marketed to consumers back in 2005 and quickly realized we were early to the party," said NMC CEO William Cast, M.D. "We shifted our attention to creating patient portals that include a portable, patient-managed PHR and deployed them with physician practices, health systems, safety net clinics, employers and universities who sponsor the solution for their populations. In some cases, the PHR is populated by consumers who appreciate the convenience of avoiding a paper clipboard form in a waiting room. In other cases, the PHR is populated with existing data from an electronic health record or a health plan," added Cast. "We attribute much of our success to balancing the interests of the consumer with an understanding of the clinical setting. We help patients organize and manage health information, and we help them deliver their data to medical professionals in either an electronic or a paper format - whatever integrates best with existing provider workflow."

Several factors are contributing to exponential growth in the personal health record space, according to Donnell. "Patient engagement meaningful use requirements tied to health IT stimulus funding is having a profound impact, spurring physicians and hospitals to get serious about communicating electronically with their patients. Employers are looking for ways to help their employees and their families better manage health information in an effort to curb healthcare cost escalation. We are also seeing significant interest in using electronic tools to manage chronic diseases, where the PHR connects patients with a clinical care advocate."

Bright Future for Consumer Health Platforms

One of the oft-cited reasons for low consumer adoption of PHRs is the inability for consumers to import existing clinical information from data sources such as health information exchanges or physician and hospital electronic health record applications. However, NoMoreClipboard reports accelerated progress on this front.

"NoMoreClipboard and Indiana Health Information Technology were recently awarded a $1.25 million ONC Challenge Grant to help consumers gain access to health data that resides in the five HIEs operating in the state of Indiana," said Donnell. "We are working with a dozen pilot sites that will equip their patients with a PHR and connect them to one or more HIEs, with data being delivered in a standard CCD format that can populate discrete data fields in the PHR. We have been asked to develop a scalable model that can be rapidly deployed around the country."

The company is also taking advantage of ONC-ATCB certification guidelines that require electronic health record vendors to generate a CCD document. "We are about to launch cc:me, a new module that enables patients with a NoMoreClipboard account to create a secure cc:me address – either an encrypted web address or a secure email that conforms to Direct Project protocols," added Cast. "Patients can give this cc:me address to a practice or hospital with an EHR, and the CCD document the EHR generates can be posted to that address. We can then consume the CCD and parse the data to populate the patient account."

Continuity for Google Health Users

For consumers who have a Google Health account, Donnell suggests that there are a number of options for making the most of existing data. "It is easy to create a free NoMoreClipboard account, connect it with an existing Google Health account, and bring the data over," said Donnell. “Once Google Health data is in NoMoreClipboard, it can then be shared with virtually any physician in the United States in an electronic or paper format. Microsoft HealthVault is also a great product, and offers some of the same platform features available in Google Health."

While NoMoreClipboard is experiencing success by working with organizations that sponsor the PHR for patient populations, Donnell is confident that a direct-to-consumer market is beginning to emerge. "When we get calls from practices and hospitals interested in our solutions, we ask them how they heard about our company. One of the top answers is cause for optimism - they often tell us that consumers are showing up in their offices with a NoMoreClipboard account wanting to know how they can send their PHR information electronically."