Becker's Hospital Review

36 CIO / HEALTH IT New technology, ancient origins: How Epic, Cerner & more got their names By Jessica Kim Cohen M ost EHR vendors have barely hit their 50th anniversary, but their namesakes trace back to origins as early as an- cient Rome and early Greek mythology. Here's how four major players in the EHR market got their names: Athenahealth: Jonathan Bush and Todd Park founded the com- pany in 1997 as a medical practice and birthing clinic in San Diego called Athena Women's Health — a reference to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war. Mr. Bush and Mr. Park noticed their team was expending significant effort to get reim- bursed for their services and decided to take a stab at developing their own solution. ey soon rebranded the company — now a cloud-based IT services provider for medical practices beyond women's health — as athenahealth, keeping the name "Athena" for its association with wisdom and strength. Cerner: Neal Patterson, Paul Gorup and Cliff Illig launched Cerner in 1979 as a soware company called PGI & Associates, based on the first letters of their three last names. Five years later the company launched its first product, PATHnet, a laboratory information systems program for pathology practices. e three founders chose to rename the company following the product's launch in 1984, and selected the name Cerner, derived from the Latin word cernere, which loosely translates as "to discern." e company chose the name Cerner because Jeanne Lillig-Patter- son, Mr. Patterson's wife, liked it, according to Forbes. Epic: Judy Faulkner famously founded Epic in a Wisconsin base- ment in 1979. e company, originally called Human Services Computing, developed data analysis soware for local govern- ments and the University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology department, according to the Madison newspaper Isthmus. e company rebranded as Epic in 1983 aer releasing a patient scheduling program. Today, the company's website notes that an epic is a "glorious recounting of a nation's events … [and] like the Iliad or the Odyssey, our electronic health records chronicle the story of a patient's healthcare over time." Meditech: Meditech's story begins in 1964 — five years before it formally opened for business — when the company's founder A. Neil Pappalardo developed a computer programming language designed for the healthcare industry. e language, MUMPS, or the Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System, is still in use today. Mr. Pappalardo believed computer systems would be able to streamline care processes throughout a hospital, and he expanded his soware vision into the health IT company Medical Information Technology in 1968, which opened its doors in 1969. Today, the company's name is almost always abbreviated as Meditech. Editor's note: Allscripts, which does not outline company history on its website, did not respond to Becker's Hospital Review's re- quest for comment July 25. n Teladoc revenue up 112%: 5 notes on the company's Q2 earnings By Julie Spitzer T eladoc Health now serves 22.5 million members, a 48 percent increase from one year prior, according to sec- ond quarter earnings results posted Aug. 1. Here are five things to know about the telehealth company's second quarter ended June 30: 1. Teladoc's total revenue was up 112 percent at $94.6 million, which included $26.7 million from Best Doctors and $6.2 million from Advance Medical, two companies it acquired earlier this year. 2. Teladoc said its total visits from U.S. paid membership were up 41 percent year-over-year at 436,000. 3. The company posted a net loss of $25.1 million for the second quarter, compared to a net loss of $15.4 million during the same period last year. 4. Teladoc reported $745 million in goodwill, compared to $498 million in December 31, 2017. This was due to the acquisition of Advance Medical and is customary in M&A. 5. The company expects its full-year revenue to be in the range of $405 million to $410 million. n UnityPoint breaches 1.4M patients' personal information after phishing attack By Julie Spitzer U nityPoint Health in West Des Moines, Iowa, notified 1.4 mil- lion patients that some of their personal information may have been compromised after hackers broke into its email system using phishing tactics, the Des Moines Register reported. As a result of the phishing attack, hackers may have been able to access various types of patient information — including diag- noses and types of care — that were included in compromised emails. Hackers may have also obtained patients' financial infor- mation, such as bank account numbers. UnityPoint told the publication that it does not believe hackers were looking for protected health information, but rather sought to divert payments like those for payroll or outside business expenses. "While we are not aware of any misuse of patient information related to this incident, we are notifying patients about what happened, what information was involved, what we have done to address the situation, and what patients can do to help pro- tect their information," RaeAnn Isaacson, UnityPoint's privacy officer, said in a news release July 30. The organization is offering free credit monitoring to patients whose Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers were exposed. It's EMR and billing systems were not affected. n

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