Last night, iMedExchange hosted the inaugural Seattle HealthTech Meetup. The event was sponsored by Faultline Ventures, with Rob Coppedge leading the discussion. It was a great event with 17 people from 14 different regional health care companies including Array Health Solutions, Clarity Health Services, Health Phone Solutions, Health Unity, Limeade, QTrait, Raffetto Herman and SnapForSeniors.

Rob Coppedge, Director for Corporate Development at iMedExchange and founder of Faultline Ventures, spoke on how Seattle can become a more vibrant and effective hub of healthcare technology. Highlighting the advantage of Seattle's entrepreneurial spirit and focus on innovation, he pointed out that Seattle is not as risk averse as some other cities currently thought of as healthcare hubs such as Nashville and Louisville. Rob did a great job getting the conversation started by speaking of his experience as a seasoned health care technology analyst and investor.

Following Rob's introduction, the group discussed Seattle's distinct attitude of "doing well by doing good' and left the evening event feeling energized and looking forward to more gatherings where active collaboration and brainstorming is the focus.

Thanks to Rob for doing such a great job, and thanks to all who attended!

We are cranking along in our new digs in Palo Alto, yet took some time to enjoy the sunshine and buzz of local events. Web 2.0 Expo provided a plethora of meetings and parties throughout Silicon Valley. The Bay Area has long been known as the epicenter of technology innovation and we enjoy the benefits of rubbing up against the best and brightest in the world of software.

The Web 2.0 Expo made it quite clear that some of the basic ideas that we think of as Web 2.0 are slowly becoming the key future add-ons to enterprise software products. While it is great to see that the corporate software types are starting to "get" the web, some of their products looked a little like dogs dancing in dresses. Familiar, but a little disturbing, and not exactly what I would call a mashup. It was also interesting that only a few products looked tailored to their audience. The wild developer-centric buzz of last year was fading and the mainstreaming of Web 2.0 is well at hand.

As President of iMedExchange, I follow most of the happenings among Internet-related businesses in order to understand how innovation occurs in our industry. Internet-related businesses are a terrific example of an extremely large and consequential industry that is still very much influenced by individual innovators.
Recently this same industry has been making quite a fuss about the Microsoft offer for Yahoo, and then of course Google’s offer of assistance to Yahoo to escape the clutches of Microsoft. What is really going on here, I asked myself. Is Google really trying to help Yahoo to avoid falling prey to a $46 Billion acquisition?
Without too much preamble, let’s be clear. This is not necessarily the worst thing from Google’s vantage point. Consider, if you would, a bit of whimsical or at the least, a counter-intuitive and more Machiavellian explanation of the behavior we are witnessing.
First, why does one think Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo? Obviously, for the same reason they bought aQuantive, the Seattle-based online advertising company. It’s a helluva lot easier to buy than build when you’ve got a ton of cash(last I heard, Microsoft generates more than $1 Billion per month in free cash flow) as well as an inadequate supply of people who are experienced innovators and builders of internet related businesses. Lest we forget, Microsoft was late to the Internet party, although extremely successful at being the second or even third entrant in a number of related technologies and businesses.
Second, if Yahoo is acquired, then all of those innovative people who know a great deal about Internet advertising are going to receive a “boat-load” of money, presumably from having their stock options become more valuable than was the case before Microsoft’s bid. Some of them may be either enticed or locked in by Microsoft for some period of time, but some will depart out the back door with wheel barrels of green stuff. Those that remain may or may not get absorbed into the Microsoft bureaucracy; and they may or may not be able to continue to innovate, a la Yahoo; at least before Google’s search engine began to drive Yahoo’s value down.
So, if you’re Google, maybe it would be better for Yahoo to get acquired and have the human talent still employed there be diluted and or disappear into the annals of business history. If you’re a player at Google and you believe that, how would you raise the likelihood of this happening?
First thing you would do is let everyone know you’re against the merger. That way the Department of Justice is likely to let it go through, since Google has such a high market share of online advertising (nearly two thirds of the market) and the prospect of a Microsoft/Yahoo merger doesn’t even come close to 33% of Google’s share; and if Google is afraid of this combination, then it must be good for competition.
Second thing you would do is offer aid to Yahoo. This further confirms, in the public eye, your fear of the merger. It also suggests to Yahoo that they still have significant market value and that their Board of Directors should refuse the offer (which is exactly what they just did) in order to either remain an independent company or get a better offer.
Let’s face it, a higher offer would be Yahoo’s best and most desirable scenario, since they’ve been steadily losing the war to Google. They don’t have pockets as deep as Microsoft’s, and their shareholders are crying foul regarding the management of the firm over the last few years as Yahoo market value has fallen.
So, if you, being Google, want to retain your dominance of the online marketing world, what better way to do it then to have your erstwhile enemy up north in Washington acquire your nearest competitor? Further, why not use some non-intuitive reverse psychology to motivate the “kids” to act according to your real wishes. Tell the world you don’t want what you really do want to happen. Everyone will think you’ve been fooled or beaten when it comes to pass; everyone, except those people who better understand your self-interest and the importance of innovators on the Internet. Or perhaps this is all just whimsy. After all, who knows what lurks in the minds of Billionaires in Redmond or Silicon Valley?

iMedExchange continues to climb the Seattle Startup Index... without yet even trying! I'm not sure what this says about the Index but I'll opt for the charitable view: i.e., that we're moving up in advance of our formal attempt to recruit members simply because we've captured the imagination of our market place. In any case, we continue to fire on all cylinders and are gathering lots of momentum. The results from January: we moved up five positions to 138 out of 260 on the overall ranking, 25 out of 39 in the Web Business to Business category (WBB) and 124 out of 206 among all web-based startups. We'll continue to have fun watching our ranking, especially as we begin to actively seek out new members.

As an aside, I noticed that skillbit (the company founded by the Seattle Startup Weekend that I mentioned in my last post) debuted at position 134 out of 260 -- actually ahead of iMedExchange! I know that the skillbit team has some smart folks working to ensure search engine optimization (SEO) so this shouldn't surprise anyone. That said, I consider it a worthy challenge to chase them up the ranks. ;)

I spent this past weekend with about 120 other Seattle startup enthusiasts at Startup Weekend, a 54-hour marathon to build a web product company from concept to launch in a single weekend. Startup Weekend was founded by a group of entrepreneurs in Boulder, CO, just last summer and already the concept has been executed in a total of 14 cities in the US, Canada and Europe. The organization, and the Weekends, are run by Andrew Hyde.

The Seattle Startup Weekend team built SkillBit.com, a tool that helps groups better understand and leverage the skills, knowledge and experience of its members. The team was divided into core groups representing software development, business development, sales and marketing, program management, user experience and graphic design. For my part, I was home-roomed with the user experience team but had privilege of working as a liaison and contributor to virtually all of the teams.

Startup Weekend was a great opportunity to connect with the local startup community as well as several successful entrepreneurs who flew into town just for the event. I am proud of all of the folks who rolled up their sleeves, built a great company and had a fabulous time while doing it. Seattle has a vibrant and talented startup community -- a great place for iMedExchange to call home.

iMedExchange continued to move its way up the Seattle Startup Index to close out 2007 at position 143 out of 243, up 10 spots from the previous month. This is especially good news since we have yet to even publically lauch or even do much at all in terms of marketing! Of course, the SSI is hardly a statistically accurate indicator of... well... anything. But it's fun to watch and I thank Marcelo Calbucci at Seattle 2.0 for keeping it going month after month.

On Tuesday night we hosted another poker night for Seattle area technology startups. The turnout was once again fantastic, with 17 fun folks representing more than a dozen different startup companies. The final table battled it out until 10:15pm when finally Casey Muller (JamGlue.com) emerged as the winner and claimed the first place prize. Second, third and fourth place finishes went to Shan Sinha (DocVerse.com), Jeff Khadavi (stealth startup), and Phuc Vu (InCampus.com).

Thanks to the great suggestion of Marcelo Calbucci of Sampa.com we reserved a seat at the tables for charity. Marcello recently implemented a charitable donation feature on his web site that makes it effortless for users to make charitable donations. For our part, we set up a side pot that everyone could donate to and then we let the winner chose a charity to send the money to. We're going to use Marcelo's web site to make the contribution -- which turned out to be $45 this time. The night's winner, Casey, chose UNICEF to receive the funds.

It was a late night for me last night as iMedExchange hosted the inaugural Seattle Poker 2.0 tournament at our offices. The purpose of the event was to bring together folks from Seattle-based startup companies to meet, hear about what's happening, share ideas, commiserate and have a good time in the process. We had two dozen attendees, all of which were startup company founders, execs or investors and most of them in the technology and/or internet space.

We started play at around 6:30 with 17 players and played until the first, second and third place winners were decided at around 11:15. I was fortunate enough to last until the final table but was then summarily dismissed within just a couple of hands. Fellow iMedExchanger Cliff Chirls (who you will be hearing more about soon) finished just out of the money in fourth place. The big winners were Cliff Monlux (1st) and Erik Jansen (2nd), both from the local Seattle private equity firm, Ramp Equity Partners. They both took a fair bit of trash talk for being the only investor types in the group and walking away with most of the money -- as "vulture capitalists" are frequently known to do. Cliff and Erik were both good sports about it and Erik generously offered to funnel his winnings back to group to sponsor the next event. Bravo, Erik! Third place went to Ian Gorrie, a local entrepreneurial technologist.

It was a great bunch of guys and they were all a blast to play poker with. However, the highlight for me was seeing the connections and hearing the conversations happening between players. The motivation for putting on the event was to foster useful dialog and synergies between Seattle area startups in a fun environment. My hat goes off to everyone who attended and made the event a success!

Bob Crimmins

iMedExchange debuted recently on the Seattle Startup Index (SSI), a monthly listing of website rankings for Seattle-based Web 2.0 startup companies. iMedExchange ranked 167 out of 210, a respectable debut, especially given the incomplete data that was available to the SSI at the time the rankings were set.

The accuracy and relevancy of both the Alexa and Compete rankings, and the averaging-approach that SSI uses, are highly debatable; but in the realm of Internet traffic metrics there is no perfection. Each month I will update you on our rank, hopefully as it continues to move up the chart.

I am creating a blog on web cams largely because they can be such a great tool for our physician community. Several physicians have uploaded their questions for presidential candidates using a web cam and realized that it can actually be pretty easy to do.

To open up the world of Internet video to those of you who have yet to travel down this path, I thought I'd provide a few web sites for reviews of cameras and a few sites for easy instructions on how to use web cams.

I am currently attending the Web 2.0 Summit held every Fall in the epicenter of technology innovation....The Bay Area. This event has become the primary event for Web 2.0 leaders from across the world.

This year, the hot topic at the conference has been the rise of Facebook...the popular social networking site started by Harvard drop-out Mark Zuckerberg. The site was once the domain of college students and is now used by people worldwide for connecting and staying up to date with friends. iMedExchange has a lot in common with Facebook....at least architecturally. This will become more apparent in the coming months as we release new functions and features.

In addition to Facebook, Google's Marissa Mayer made some interesting comments about Google's forray into healthcare. Most of Mayer's comments involved the digitization of heath information. While Google is known for search, they have a massive infrastructure that can handle mind-boggling amounts of data. She made some obtuse comments about medical x-rays and personal healthcare records. The inference was that Google feels well positioned to help the US Healthcare industry digitize and catalog medical x-rays and somehow also have an impact on the adoption of personal health records. We'll see....no question they have a lot of capital and some creative minds.

In coming blog posts, I think I'll provide some overviews of Web 2.0 companies and the interesting technologies that are shaping social networking at large. If you have personal favorites or comments, please feel free to respond to the blog post.

Last week we opened iMedExchange for Beta usage. “Beta” basically means that despite the current value of iMedExchange, there is lots more to come. Every few weeks we will release improvements and additions, and I'm going to use this blog to preview some of those new features.
Currently, each iMedExchange member has a profile that shows some minimal information. These profiles will soon include additional information, allowing physicians to connect and get to know physicians around the country, who have a very interesting variety of backgrounds and insights. As a preview to the more robust profiles, Rebecca is interviewing some of the physicians that are using iMedExchange, and will feature their interviews on our blog. You can read her first physician interview tomorrow, and get some insight into what the more robust profiles will come to include.

I just returned from Health 2.0 in San Francisco. What a terrific event! Matthew Holt from theHealthCareBlog.com and his colleagues put together a first rate affair, which is all the more impressive given that this was their first event.

Among the highlights were the terrific questions for presidential candidates we obtained on video. iMedExchange sponsored what was called the “UnConference”. This essentially meant that we were performing a grass roots service by collecting video questions, as opposed to hosting a booth to talk about our site. Rebecca did a super job engaging the physicians in attendance and they were all good sports about getting their voices added to the growing body of questions on iMedExchange.

I don't go to a lot of conferences - in fact I try to stay at the office as much as possible, and leave the traveling up to those that do it best. But when I found out that the Healthcare Blogging and Social Media Summit was taking place, I knew this was the right event for me to go to. What a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with people who love healthcare technology, and get ideas for iMedExchange.

I just got back home from the summit in Chicago, which had seminars yesterday and today. I learned so much over the two days that I can't begin to go into it now.
In fact I almost skipped blogging about it tonight, just because there's so much to say - I don't know where to start. I tried to get my thoughts down on paper on the plane ride home, and ended up with a 5 page word document. From Enoch Choi's straight-forward questions about iMedExchange, to Nicholas Jacobs' great stories about his blogging as a hospital CEO, I tried to do as much listening as I could. I'm very excited to get back to my desk tomorrow and start working with what I learned in these few days. Thanks to everyone I met there... it was an enlightening 2 days.

Tony Chen’s recent blog post and the subsequent string of comments touch on the reality that virtual communities are here to stay and will have a significant impact on everything including healthcare. I too grew up largely in the 70s and 80s…a time when community was mainly built around the local pool, school, etc. MySpace and its ilk are changing the landscape faster than we can even imagine…and healthcare will feel the impact immensely. Give Tony’s blog entry a read and let me know what you think.