QI Healthcare helps hospitals improve quality

The U.S. health-care industry is in great need of cost efficiencies and quality of care improvements, and a new company in Cincinnati is poised to help. 

In 2010, as a country, we spent more than $2.6 trillion on health care but still ranked lower than most countries in terms of quality of care. 

Also, new federal legislation will create incentives for hospitals and health-care facilities to meet quality standards and effectively punish those that don’t. 

CincyTech’s newest portfolio company, QI Healthcare, is helping hospital meet and exceed these quality benchmarks. 

The company was created from technology developed at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center by Dr. Frederick Ryckman, professor of surgery and senior vice president for Medical Operations at Cincinnati Children’s; Paul Yelton, senior application developer; and Candace Overly, project administrator, Perioperative Services. 

What Cincinnati Children’s developed is called the Surgical Outcomes Collection System (SOCS). It’s a software application for use in hospitals and health-care facilities that aggregates data from a hospital’s various systems, including its Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system, to conduct institution-wide analyses of cases where quality of care could be improved. 

“The real power of this software is in the ability to analyze every significant patient case,” says Ryckman. “Before SOCS we spent countless hours manually gathering data. SOCS improves the process through automation and enhanced analytics – and it frees up clinical resources to focus on quality improvement.”

Leading QI’s efforts is experienced entrepreneur and health-tech executive John Atkinson. Before being named CEO of QI, Atkinson held leadership roles at WebMD, Mede America and SourceMedical. He is also co-founder of a successful mobile startup, BuzzVoice, a streaming audio news service for smartphones.

CincyTech and Cincinnati Children’s Tomorrow Fund each invested $200,000. This round of funding will go toward sales, marketing and product development, which includes securing a handful of beta test sites for the SOCS software that has been in use at Cincinnati Children’s for more than a year. 

By Sarah Blazak for CincyTech