A digital pen from Anoto.
Serial entrepreneur and longtime mobile health developer Stephen Hau is stepping aside as CEO of his current venture, Shareable Ink, as the Nashville, Tennessee-based provider of digital pen-based healthcare data capture has brought in a veteran health IT executive to run the company.
Laurie McGraw, most recently chief client officer at EHR vendor Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, took over as CEO of Shareable Ink last week to help the 4-year-old vendor move into a growth phase. Hau will shift to chief technology officer, heading up product development and platform strategy.
The news comes on the heels of privately held Shareable Ink closing late last month on a $3 million round of equity funding, led by previous investor Lemhi Ventures. "Right now, the company has some really strong momentum," says McGraw, who tells MobiHealthNews that she will not substantially alter Shareable Ink's strategy.
Shareable Ink uses digital pens from Anoto to capture handwriting on laser-printed, plain-paper forms, then sends data over a Bluetooth connection to a smartphone or PC, which links to a Shareable Ink cloud server. Within seconds, the server converts the handwriting to computable text for export into EHRs and practice management systems.
The software also is capable of capturing and converting handwriting from iPads or scanned documents. Shareable Ink earned certification for Meaningful Use as a module able to meet 11 of the ambulatory EHR standards in Stage 1. "It's a platform to make workflows actionable and efficient," McGraw says.
Today, Shareable Ink reports that 85 clients are live on its system, automating patient encounters in specialties not always amenable to keyboard-based EHRs, particularly anesthesia and emergency medicine. "That's strong for a company in early stage," according to McGraw, who says she was drawn to Shareable Ink by Hau's "brilliance."
McGraw, who is based in Boulder, Colorado, but will spend much of her time on the road, worked for EHR pioneer IDX Systems — later bought by GE Healthcare — in the 1990s. She moved to Allscripts in 2000 when that company bought point-of-care software vendor ChannelHealth from IDX.
At the time, Allscripts had $30 million in annual revenues. When McGraw left the Chicago-based company during a management purge last December, Allscripts was a $1.5 billion company.
ChannelHealth was an early player in mobile health, allowing physicians to dictate notes, enter orders and capture charges on personal digital assistants. Similarly, Hau founded mobile health company PatientKeeper in the 1990s.
McGraw says she was aware of Hau's reputation, although the two had never met before they started talking about Shareable Ink.
"As I got to know him, I got really excited about the company," she says.
