HealthMyne: Madison company seeks to implement new software platform for medical imaging

By Maria Meives
For WisBusiness.com

Madison-based HealthMyne, Inc. is setting their bars high in the field of healthcare, and rightly so considering the impressive track record of the people working hard behind the scene.

Founded by successful entrepreneurs T. Rock Mackie, Praveen Sinha, Roger Chylla, and Hao Wang in January 2013, HealthMyne is developing an innovative software platform for clinical decision support within medical imaging that can be broken into three sections: search, analytics and imaging.

HealthMyne’s SAI technology makes images and advanced analytics accessible from anywhere within the enterprise including mobile devices. The solution is seeking to satisfy the emerging demand to view imaging content and related analytics across disparate medical institutions. This medical imaging software has been designed to address a number of limitations of existing Healthcare Information Systems.

First, it will provide diagnosticians, specialists, and primary care physicians with images and related medical records for patients that are available across multiple clinics and on multiple devices such as tablets.

The platform is also designed to add novel imaging diagnostic capabilities that are correlative, evidence-based, scalable, and accessible throughout the enterprise to meet demands of mobile health.

Along with the powerful clinical decision support, HealthMyne will also offer quality assurance tools to reduce diagnostic errors, foster greater collaboration among specialists and referring clinicians, which will help improve patient results.

“A current challenge in diagnostic radiology involves the “Yes”, “No”, and “Maybe” of whether an acquired scan, a CT lung exam for example, contains evidence for a tumor,” Chylla said.

“Ideally, the diagnostician can issue an answer of “Yes” or “No” with high confidence.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of “Maybe” findings that trigger additional imaging exams (as maybe other medical tests) that cause anguish for the patient and increases to healthcare costs,” he added.

HealthMyne’s software will provide additional relevant information from the first exam, which will be extremely valuable for diagnosticians.

“We know that diagnosticians are eager to use quantitative information such as measured sizes and other characteristics of lesions to add confidence to their decisions and we just need to provide that information in a timely, efficient manner. We hope to do exactly that with seamless incorporation and presentation of analytics alongside the images.” Chylla said.

In today’s health care system, data recall is often very difficult and time consuming. With the implementation of HealthMyne’s technology, this data recall will be a much easier and expedited process.

“I describe today’s healthcare data as being dark,” Mackie explained.

“Dark data is data that is stored but almost never reused,” he continued. “Today, physicians gain experience through being good at remembering details because looking up the data is too time consuming. Up until now, their experience is that the data may be difficult to locate within an electronic record due to either poor organization or a lack of search tools. Even if the right data is found, the analytics to assist in decision support are not commercially available. HealthMyne wants to change that.”

And the founders of this innovative business plan (as well as the business plan itself) must not be overlooked.

As Sinha explained, “This is an A+ team with deep domain expertise (and a) history of working together to create great medical imaging products, and a solid execution plan.”

The founders have created three successful companies in the field of medical imaging and radiation technology. Of the three companies, two resulted in initial public offerings and the third was acquired by a large public company that is now part of Philips. Combined, the products for the medical imaging market have generated close to $3 billion in sales since 1996 and are being used in 1,000 hospitals worldwide.

Since the inception of HealthMyne, Inc., the company has raised $1 million. The company is looking to raise between $2 million and $3 million more in order to complete product development and initiate its launch in 2015.

Within five years of introducing its SAI platform, HealthMyne anticipates it can generate close to $50 million annually in revenue.

— Meives is a student in the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communication.