drchrono debuts patient check-in app, gets $650K

The EHR startup gets support from DST's Yuri Milner

Drchrono, the company that’s looking to mobilize electronic health records, on Thursday announced the launch of its new patient check-in app, OnPatient, along with a $650K round of seed funding led by DST’s Yuri Milner and General Catalyst.  The new funding comes on the heels of drchrono’s recent $675K round of seed funding, announced in July, bringing the startup’s total raised thus far to more than $1.3 million.

As healthcare practitioners move en masse to electronic health records, a number of companies have sprung up to meet demand, but drchrono has added a unique twist to electronic health records: mobility.  The startup’s iPad app allows doctors to take notes, write prescriptions and send them to pharmacies, schedule appointments, and more directly from their iPads.  And drchrono actually leverages some of the features unique to the iPad to make its service even more convenient, including using the iPad 2’s built-in camera to allow doctors to take pictures and record videos to add to a patient’s file.

The new app, OnPatient, is a new take on the traditional clipboard and paper check-in process.  Now, front desk personnel can simply hand the patient an iPad with the OnPatient app up and ready to go, allowing the patient to add family medical history and demographic information, insurance info, sign the HIPAA agreement with a digital signature, and even snap a photo for the records.  The information instantly auto-populates on the EHR platform, which means office staff don’t have to hassle with retyping all of the information into the office’s electronic files.

“The OnPatient check-in app digitizes the waiting room and eliminates significant barriers to mass adoption of patient check-in technology by leveraging sophisticated iPad technology. Proprietary check-in hardware is prohibitively expensive and integration with existing EHR systems is too complex,” said Michael Nusimow, co-founder and CEO of drchrono, in a statement. “We designed the OnPatient app to be intuitive for both physicians and patient users to create a better patient check-in experience.”

Healthcare providers have another incentive to get onboard the drchrono train.  Last month, the drchrono app received official federal certification—known as the Meaningful Use certification—which allows doctors to receive up to $44,000 in government incentives.  Doctors simply have to show that they are using an electronic health records platform enough to qualify.  Drchrono was the first company to be certified for an iPad app, which will track how much a doctor uses the platform and then provide them with the key metrics to report to the government to get their incentive money.

Last month, drchrono raised $675K from General Catalyst, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups, Gmail creator and FriendFeed cofounder Paul Buchheit, Google’s Principal Engineer Matt Cutts, and the Start Fund, which is comprised of investments from Yuri Milner and SV Angel.  The company is a Y Combinator graduate.