Health Portal will integrate with Ecognize’s Remedi healthcare platform - Practice Management and EMR software, as well as other applications in the healthcare ecosystem. Remedi is an Intranet/Extranet based platform for physician practices, billing companies, and hospitals with facilities for appointment scheduling, billing, and medical records.

"Health Portal will be initially made available for doctors practices and hospitals as a value added capability for their patients. There are distinct ROI savings that the providers can leverage to improve their business productivity as well as medical outcomes," said Dr. Umesh Harigopal, President and CEO of Ecognize. "We expect to add several knowledge on demand services in 2006 to make this a key component of the RHIO (Regional Health Information Organization) healthcare model."

Analytics and workflow capabilities together enable an organization to continuously improve its performance by analyzing its past and tuning itself for the future. Analytics capabilities help retrieve key indicators of how a business is performing - financial, physician productivity, office efficiency, patient segmentation, coding compliance, etc. Such insights are extracted by observing how these indicators change with time. The integrated workflow facilities provide the practice with the tools to improve its processes, resulting in higher productivity, profitability, and quality of care.

"As reimbursements are decreasing and physicians are left with little time to focus on efficiency and productivity, Remedi’s new release provides instant visibility into the health of a practice," said Dr. Riaz, board certified Internal Medicine physician in Ohio.

Remedi is an integrated solution for scheduling, billing, and medical records and is also available as separate modules. Since it is web-based and can be accessed from anywhere via browser, it helps practices pursue selective centralizing or distribution of certain office functions such as appointment scheduling and billing. It is built using industry proven technologies - WebSphere Portal and DB2 database from IBM. The software is available as a hosted service or for purchase and installation at a customer site.

"The latest release of Remedi delivers on our vision of an affordable but comprehensive healthcare solution for businesses of all sizes," said Sudhir Kolli, CTO and Vice President of Engineering at Ecognize. "Key performance measures of a practice are embedded deep in the data gathered in the practice applications. Remedi Practice Analytics makes these measures easily and quickly available to decision makers. Current customers will receive this upgrade at no additional cost."

The partnerships may also entail a services and support partnership based on the partner's capabilities. Ecognize has already been actively pursuing a few sales partnerships with some combined sales deals already closed. The partner network will soon be announced.

The client moved from a single location billing system with legacy communications capabilities over telephone modems to a state-of-the-art web-based platform that Remedi supports.

The client leveraged the customizability of the Remedi platform to create a system for their specific needs. The overall implementation that included the migration of the data from the legacy system into the Remedi platform, and the training of the employees was completed in a span of 2 weeks.

In addition to the cost effectiveness of the ODC, Ecognize also recognizes the presence of highly trained IT professionals with skills in J2EE and portals. It selected Chennai as the home for its ODC based on the improved power and network infrastructure and the fast growth of the high-technology sector in and around Chennai.

Ecognize plans to leverage the ODC for both its product development as well as outsourced system integration services. The services currently offered include healthcare system integration and portal development based on open standards in healthcare (HL7, HIPPA, ANSI X12) and technology (J2EE, JSR 168 for portals).

"Ecognize is an innovator in healthcare, with a deep understanding of healthcare IT and proven transformational strategies and architecture," said Madhavan Padmakumar, President and CEO of Software Incubator. "This coupled with Software Incubator’s project delivery model will help us offer maximum ROI to our customers with a highly focused execution and delivery."

A proof point of this partnership is a recent strategy consulting work Ecognize provided to a large medical services company in Canada that paved the way to significant cost reduction and productivity improvement. "We are excited about this strategic alliance. It positions Ecognize and Software Incubator to provide rapid business value to our customers leveraging our healthcare software framework," said Sudhir Kolli, CTO and Vice President of Engineering at Ecognize.

About Ecognize
Ecognize is a healthcare product development and solution consulting company focused on solving strategic and tactical business challenges through key software products. Their software frameworks and a healthcare product platform enable rapid value creation for physician offices, hospitals, and billing companies by focusing on risk management, controlling costs, and improving outcomes. Ecognize is an IBM Business Partner and is headquartered in New Jersey with offices in Ohio, California, and India.

About Software Incubator
Software Incubator is a full service BPO company that also offers On Demand data services and Joint Venture incubation opportunities. The off shore software development team includes experts in latest technologies as well as subject matter experts in Finance, Legal, Real Estate, and other industry business processes. Software Incubator is an IBM and Microsoft Business Partner headquartered in Massachussets, with incubation and services facilities in India.