October 1, 2015, By Eric Klos, Principal Consultant at HealthTechture, and Health IT SME for G2Xchange Health
The VA, Defense Health Agency, and industry partners are increasingly looking for small businesses with a combination of clinical domain expertise and technical capability. Small businesses in the Federal Health IT market tend to overemphasize their technical capabilities and under-represent their domain expertise in clinical care delivery and health information systems. For small businesses, it can be a significant commitment to make the types of investments required to develop these capabilities, but included below is a short list of some of the leading federal health IT small businesses that have managed to differentiate themselves by developing their Clinical ‘Chops.
A broad set of criteria was used to establish this list:
- Past experience providing clinical domain expertise to an IT program or project office, or working directly with health information systems which require clinical domain understanding
- Clinical domain expertise on staff including physicians, nurses, radiologists, pharmacists, etc.
- Executive level commitment – which may include employment of a Chief Medical Officer, Chief Medical Informatics Officer and/or an Advisory Board of clinical practitioners
- Regular development and promotion of thought leadership in either written form or in directing and supporting advisory groups and consortiums.
- Additional investment or effort applied to clinical understandings, i.e. development of technology and/or product solutions.
The following list, in no particular order, constitutes some of the leading small businesses with domain expertise in clinical care delivery and health information systems. This report will be updated on a rolling basis to reflect the changing landscape in these critical areas. If at any time you believe that your firm warrants an inclusion on the list, let us know.
TechWerks
Led by CEO, Lt. Col. (RET) Mike Fravell, former CTO of DHIMS, and Director of Engineering of the MHS Clinical Information Technology Program Office (CITPO); TechWerks has continued to add clinical expertise. This includes added military medical practitioners such as Chief Medical Officer, Colonel (retired) Dr. Andre Marinkovich; and Director, Health Strategy, Brigadier General (retired) Rhonda Cornum. The leadership team has direct project and program experience with technical initiatives that range from AHLTA/CHCS to the Joint Patient Tracking Application. Among the myriad of projects TechWerks has supported recently, some highlights include the Mirth Prototype for Theater Framework Modernization, the Knowledge Sharing System for DHIMS, and the Coast Guard EHR Implementation (EPIC).
