“Francisco-based provider of free web-based electronic health records (EHRs) raised $23 million in a round led by Founders Fund, a venture capital firm run by billionaire Peter Thiel, a PayPal founder and early investor in Facebook. In a press release, Thiel declared: “Practice Fusion revolutionizes our interactions with the medical community, just as Facebook did for social networking.”
Revolutions aside, Thiel, a libertarian, saw his investment in Practice Fusion as a rare opportunity to take advantage of a government mandate. In February 2009, Congress passed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act—part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Obama administration wants to promote the use of EHRs; it is doing so by subsidizing doctors and hospitals’ purchase of EHRs, setting aside $19 billion in taxpayers money. There’s a fixed deadline–2015; and there are penalties for those eligible health care providers who don’t comply with a specific set of rules to qualify for the incentives.”
Article
Zina Moukheiber, Forbes, 21 June 2011
