• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

IU-based startup commercializes software to improve quality of care for pediatric patients

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
February 2, 2017
in Science News
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

INDIANAPOLIS — Two members of the Indiana University School of Medicine have launched a startup to commercialize software targeting improvement in pediatric patient care.

The promise of information technology has been to improve quality, cut costs and increase patient satisfaction. By themselves, electronic health records, or EHRs, have failed to achieve those aims. Software that adds functionality to EHRs can assess patient risks, help physicians identify problems earlier and better document care quality. The result is earlier detection and treatment of problems and better health outcomes for children.

Dr. Stephen Downs, president, and Tammy Dugan, chief technology officer, founded Digital Health Solutions LLC. The company's first software product is CHICA, or Child Health Improvement through Computer Automation. Dugan said the mission behind starting Digital Health Solutions was to make the software available beyond Indianapolis to improve the quality of care of children nationwide.

"It's a population that doesn't get as much attention because of the reimbursement structures in hospitals," Dugan said. "We have a great piece of software, and we have had a lot of interest from people over the years. We want to get it out there so kids can benefit from it.

"CHICA has been in use at Eskenazi Hospital clinics for over a dozen years for more than 50,000 visits," she said. "It is mature, production-level software."

Downs said health care providers, including pediatricians, struggle with managing the thousands of primary care guidelines and recommendations for each patient visit.

"CHICA addresses this challenge by screening families in the waiting room," he said. "Families receive an electronic tablet upon arrival that asks 20 questions. Based on the family's responses, the software uses its prioritization process to select the most important issues for the physician to address during the visit. The family can provide information on a wide range of topics, including general preventive counseling, asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, domestic violence, iron deficiency, lead exposure, maternal depression, tuberculosis and more. It also allows physicians to alert patients to problems that may otherwise be overlooked."

"The integration is intuitive and requires little provider training," Dugan said. "When doctors access a patient's electronic health record, or EHR, an embedded link allows them to visit CHICA. Once the doctors have checked all the boxes, indicating how they responded to the alerts, the information is submitted as a block of text to EHR software that can then be incorporated into the provider's note, thereby streamlining clinical documentation."

"The underlying technology for CHICA can also be adapted for adult or specialty care areas," Downs said. "We are currently working to develop a new module for gastrointestinal specialists."

Along with improving patient quality of care, CHICA offers other benefits for health care providers.

"Payers of health care are looking for ways for providers to demonstrate superior-quality care," Downs said. "The system captures data that improves and demonstrates the quality of care, which could be used to improve reimbursement. It also collects patient-reported information that can't be captured any other way. My colleagues and I have conducted a number of research studies using the data.

"At various scientific meetings, I am routinely asked, 'How do we get CHICA?' Tammy and I launched Digital Health Solutions as a mechanism to distribute it to anyone who wants it."

###

Digital Health Solutions LLC licensed CHICA through the http://iurtc.iu.edu, which protects, markets and licenses intellectual property developed at Indiana University so it can be commercialized by industry. The company is also a member of IURTC's Spin Up entrepreneurial program.

More information about the company is available at https://www.digitalhealthsolutionsllc.com/

About Indiana University Research and Technology Corp.

IURTC is a not-for-profit corporation tasked with the protecting and commercializing of technology emanating from innovations by IU researchers. Since 1997, IU research has generated more than 2,700 inventions resulting in more than 4,100 global patent applications being filed by IURTC. These discoveries have generated more than $135 million in licensing and royalty income, including more than $112 million in funding for IU departments, labs and inventors.

Media Contact

Steve Martin
[email protected]
317-278-1505
@IndianaResearch

http://newsinfo.iu.edu

############

Story Source: Materials provided by Scienmag

Share12Tweet7Share2ShareShareShare1

Related Posts

Machine Learning Predicts Live Birth Outcomes in IVF

October 7, 2025
Biochar Derived from Invasive Weeds Protects Rice Crops from Toxic Nanoplastics and Heavy Metals

Biochar Derived from Invasive Weeds Protects Rice Crops from Toxic Nanoplastics and Heavy Metals

October 7, 2025

Natural ‘Battery’ of Soil Bacteria and Minerals Dismantles Antibiotics in Darkness

October 7, 2025

Rice University Unveils Second Cohort of Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows

October 7, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Sperm MicroRNAs: Crucial Mediators of Paternal Exercise Capacity Transmission

    939 shares
    Share 375 Tweet 235
  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    99 shares
    Share 40 Tweet 25
  • New Study Indicates Children’s Risk of Long COVID Could Double Following a Second Infection – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    95 shares
    Share 38 Tweet 24
  • Ohio State Study Reveals Protein Quality Control Breakdown as Key Factor in Cancer Immunotherapy Failure

    77 shares
    Share 31 Tweet 19

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Machine Learning Predicts Live Birth Outcomes in IVF

Biochar Derived from Invasive Weeds Protects Rice Crops from Toxic Nanoplastics and Heavy Metals

Natural ‘Battery’ of Soil Bacteria and Minerals Dismantles Antibiotics in Darkness

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 63 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.