I’m doing a quick round up of the big EMR systems and some of the promising new ones. I think I may have over done it on the pharma companies when I did that round up, so I’m going to be a little briefer here. I will try to do the 5 most popular EMRs and a couple emerging ones. Today is Athena Health.
Athena Health
Today is a brief detour from top EMRs by market share to talk about Athena Health. I’ll return to do a write up of CSPI, which I know nothing about, but which has a higher market share.
I do know a little about Athena, as I worked at a company that used Athena for their EMR. The reason we chose it was that it had a good API to build applications on top of, making it more of a modern EMR and perhaps more relevant to Health Tech start ups.
Athena was founded in 1997 by Jonathan Bush, cousin of former President George W. Bush. The EMR and practice management system sought to differentiate themselves by creating a robust API and automating more billing and scheduling tasks. They also launched a virtual scribe service and expanded their telehealth offering during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2018, Athena Health underwent some restructuring, cutting jobs to try to improve profitability. They were acquired in 2019 by Veritas Capital and Elliott Management for $5.7 billion.
Key Facts
2.7% of EHR marketshare
Founded in 1997 by Jonathan Bush
Known for robust API and workflow automation
Acquired by Veritas Capital and Elliot Management in 2019
Resources
https://www.athenahealth.com/about
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/list-of-top-10-ehr-vendors-in-2020.html
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/athenahealth-rolls-out-virtual-scribe-service-autochart-ai-engines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_S._Bush