To kick things off, we'd like to share the company we keep... Therapy Partners Inc. (Guelph), Professional Rehabilitation Outreach (Barrie), Therapy Health Care (Burlington), Community Rehab (Hamilton), Nightingale Health Care (Toronto), We Care Home Health Services (Toronto), Spectrum Health Care (Toronto) and the Continuing Care eHealth Council (Ontario).

Most of our clients are Home Care Service Providers.  We have had early success implementing our Electronic Health Records portal in the home care segment. We are in the testing phase for our MedShare HC Suite which provides client database, billing and scheduling for our agency clients.  More on that later...

The Continuing Care eHealth Council selected MedShare to be their software development partner.  We are currently working on delivering the InterRAI Short Stay Assessment in an online format.  The Common Intake Assessment Tool (CIAT) went into its pilot phase in April 2006 in several CCACs with a view to quickly roll out to the entire province. 

In March we initiated a pilot for our proprietary CareLink™ device. The pilot, executed in the Wellington/Waterloo district of one of Canada’s largest home health care providers, also involved Bell Canada and CareLink device manufacturer WiredTime.

The remainder of 2006 promises to be a busy and exciting time for MedShare and our clients. We look forward to sharing news on the product development, staffing and marketing fronts.

Better Care Comes Home

MedShare has undertaken an aggressive new branding strategy, resulting in revamped logos for both MedShare and the MedShare Home Care Suite (see image below). The new logo and colour schemes represent a balance of caring and sharing, or as Barry likes to say “high tech meets high touch.” At MedShare, we understand that human touch is the most important aspect of home health care. Our belief is that the products we’re developing will assist our clients in delivering consistently better care, resulting in better outcomes. One client at a time. Our new look and brand direction is meant to capture this.

A number of support pieces will follow in the coming months, including print advertising, brochures, detail pieces, a revamped web site, and trade show support materials.

Product Management Process

MedShare is currently implementing a formal Product Management Process. The process is critical to ensure that we are meeting our customer and market needs and that we are maximizing the output from our product development resources. The process involves writing Use Cases which capture customer requirements in a consistent manner. Each Use Case represents a functional area or feature of the product that needs to be built or enhanced to meet the market requirement (for example, Creating Invoices).

The benefits of this process are:

• Greater confidence in product release dates and resource requirements
• Superior customer satisfaction by meeting requirements sooner and more precisely
• Better communication and knowledge transfer among various teams
• Higher product quality
• Enhanced customer service and support

Product Roadmap

The objectives of the Product Roadmap are:

• To establish/maintain credibility with key stakeholders
• To establish/maintain “thought leadership” status
• To communicate long term product vision
• To reflect corporate strategy

The Product Roadmap is a high level plan for the future of the product (~2 years) that is a reflection of the corporate strategy.

The Roadmap Defines:

• Major functional areas to be added to the product
• Major enhancements to current functional areas
• Significant changes in supporting technologies (such as browser or operating system versions)
• Delivery dates

The Roadmap is critical for communicating product plans to customers, prospects, investors and staff.

The current MedShare Product Roadmap calls for the initial Agency Management functionality in Release 1.0 for the Canadian market followed by the billing functionality for the US Medicare billing system as well as the incorporation of the MedShare Portal into the HC product.

Clients can obtain a detailed description of the MedShare HC Product Roadmap by contacting Paul Lupinacci.

Common Intake Assessment Tool (CIAT)
project nears completion.

For the past 6 months MedShare has been working very closely with the HCCAP team of the Ministry of Health on a project called "The Common Intake Assessment Tool" (CIAT).  The project is an initiative to standardize the short stay intake assessment across the province of Ontario. 

Implementing breakthrough technology and the InterRAI standardized short stay assessment "tool", the CIAT project is currently in an end-user pilot with 3 Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) in the Toronto area.  This ground-breaking initiative will revolutionize the short stay intake assessment process across the province and will make Ontario the country's leader in this area.

MedShare and WiredTime Launch CareLink™ Pilot

MedShare has initiated a pilot project to evaluate several aspects of the CareLink device.

The project, being executed in the Wellington/Waterloo district of one of Canada’s largest home health care providers, also involves Bell Canada and CareLink device manufacturer WiredTime.

The unique CareLink device, the first of its kind, is a hand-held device used by Personal Support Workers in the home health care field. Barcodes are placed on the client’s chart in the home, and represent the client’s ID and service tasks.  The device is operated by pressing the scan button and pointing at a barcode. The CareLink unit then wirelessly transmits the device ID, date/time and barcode information to the central server used to update billing and payroll data.

The pilot, which began on March 27th, will run for a period of six weeks in order to collect qualitative and quantitative data from which to evaluate the features of the CareLink device, and determine the feasibility of a company-wide deployment of the CareLink Automated Delivery Confirmation System.

MedShare wins prestigious Health Informatics award.

On November 24, 2005 MedShare was awarded Project Implementation Team of the Year at the 2005 Canadian Health Informatics Awards Gala.

This prestigious award recognizes MedShare’s achievement in implementing an Electronic Health Record (EHR) portal solution in the home health care sector. The project demonstrated innovation, knowledge transfer, implementation of best practices and resulted in substantial adoption and utilization by health care workers. At Therapy Partners Inc. (www.therapypartners.on.ca), the reference site for the EHR portal, all sixty-two health care practitioners moved to the new paperless medical records solution, saving time and money, and improving organizational effectiveness.

The award Judges evaluated a number of project criteria, including excellence in communications, team effort, issues management and knowledge transfer. MedShare was judged to have delivered the proposed plan, demonstrated that the project had been brought in on time and within budget, and utilized excellent change management and project management methodologies.

MedShare has been designated a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, the highest level within the Microsoft Certified Partner program. This certification recognizes MedShare's expertise in developing software solutions based on the Microsoft platform.  As a Gold Certified Partner, MedShare gains early access to new technology and all the tools necessary to ensure comprehensive product development and priority technical support.  For more information, visit www.microsoft.com.