1. Name:
Enhanced Medical Decisions (EMD)
Site:
http://www.enhancedmd.com
Founded: 1999
Located: Cambridge, MA
Why it matters: Backed by a Harvard-trained epidemiologist with a stunning track record, EMD’s natural language search engine scours thousands of medical research studies and academic medical texts to give patients a perspective on the calls their doctors are making. As this company’s name carefully underscores, no one here is trying to take away a doctor’s authority or criticize their judgment. But the technology developed by EMD is poised to offer, let us say, a digital reality check on physicians’ work, something that we think will be increasingly common over the next year or two. And though it’s being offered on the consumer side, we think doctors will interact with these systems too—the tools are just too smart to ignore!
What to look for: First, in mid-March, EMD plans to roll out a drug side-effect double-checker. Then, later in 2007, look for DoubleCheckMD Decisions, another consumer-facing Web application, which will give patients a look at the logic of their doctor’s diagnosis.
