Who: Evan Steele

Current position: Chief Executive Officer of SRSsoft

Location: Montvale, N.J.

Fast facts: Steele founded SRSsoft in 1997 after creating a "hybrid" EMR to help the New York City medical practice he managed at the time improve access to patient charts. The company markets its flagship product, SRS Hybrid EMR, to "high-performance" medical specialties like cardiology, orthopedics and ophthalmology that generate much higher per-patient charges than primary care.

What makes him disruptive: Steele, who has an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, dismisses the Medicare and Medicaid EMR incentive program for "meaningful use" of EMRs because he's convinced it's skewed toward primary care, not specialty care. The CMS rules for meaningful use require the capture of discrete data elements, and Steele believes those regulations largely follow the structure of "traditional" EMR systems that effectively force physicians to become clerks. But SRS has declined to seek certification of its EMR, instead going after a surprisingly large like-minded customer base that just wants an EMR system to improve practice workflow, even if doctors stick with their handwritten or dictated notes. "Our clients, they fully expect not to get the [incentive] money," Steele told FierceEMR in January 2010.