Practice Fusion, Inc., a vendor of electronic medical records, announced last week that it will make use of Google's AdSense program to help sponsor free online EMRs for physicians.
It's not unusual to have a partnership with Google for pay-per-click profit-sharing, according to Brandon McCormick, spokesperson for Google. It is, however, somewhat unique to sponsor free electronic medical records for doctors with the profits.
Google's AdSense program has hundreds of thousands of websites, hundreds of thousands of publishers and reaches 76 percent of all Internet users globally, McCormick said.
"Publishers," such as Practice Fusion, sign up to use Google's AdSense program online. Advertisers pay Google according to the number of clicks an ad receives and Google shares the proceeds with its publishers. McCormick declined to say how much Google is paying Practice Fusion per ad, but it is "a majority of the profits," he said.
For the arrangement with Practice Fusion, ads are being placed on Practice Fusion's online electronic health records, available free to doctors. When the doctors use the EMRs, Google delivers ads based on keywords. "It's an automated way of creating a sales force without having to incur any startup costs,"McCormick said.
Ryan Howard, CEO of Practice Fusion said the use of Google's AdSense program "is unique because we're embedding ads within an actual product."
The Google ads do not interfere with the privacy of patient records, Howard said. "All we transmit is a condition, a diagnosis or a treatment through CPT codes used to present ads."
Howard said Practice Fusion's EMR model is gaining momentum because of its user-friendly format and doctors are not concerned with the Google ads that appear on the product. More than 600 small physician practices have signed up for the service since the beginning of 2007, Howard said.
"Once we get (doctors) to look at a demo, it's a done deal every time," Howard said. "Doctors are consumers and Internet users. They use Google and they are used to the ads. When it comes down to using our product for free, supported by Google pay-per-clicks, versus paying $50,000 for a typical health record product, it's very compelling. The day of EMR vendors gauging doctors is coming to an end," Howard said.
According to Kim Malone, director of operations for Google AdSense, Practice Fusion's model of linking physicians and patients together with a cost-free solution is the right step towards the improvement of healthcare nationwide. "This will allow patients to receive a higher level of care and empower them to play a significant role in managing their health," Malone said.