Salesforce Invests In Electronic Medical Record App Developer

Salesforce.com has acquired a stake in Practice Fusion, a developer of free, Web-based physician applications, the two companies said Thursday. The size of the investment wasn't disclosed.

Later this year Practice Fusion is expected to launch a new patient health record application that's based on Salesforce's Force.com cloud computing platform.

"With this investment from Salesforce.com, Practice Fusion is now backed by the enterprise cloud computing leader," said Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard, in a statement. "The technology, capital and leadership from this partnership will ensure that Practice Fusion continues to outpace our competitors who are sticking with expensive, legacy client/server software."

The market for electronic medical record applications is crowded with such players as GE Healthcare, eClinicalWorks and Spring Medical Systems. Google and Microsoft are also pushing into this area: Last month at its Worldwide Partner Conference Microsoft demonstrated its HealthVault platform for storing and maintaining health and fitness information.

There is a lot of focus on encouraging physicians to adopt electronic medical record applications right now given that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus bill contains funding for EMR technology. The Obama Administration has sought to expand the use of EMR software as a way of lowering healthcare costs.

Practice Fusion already offers a number of on-demand applications for physicians including electronic medical records, practice management and patient scheduling software.