TransChart is pleased to once again be an exhibitor at this workshop.  Please stop by our booth in the fabulous Hotel Del Coronado in Coronado, CA September 26-27.

TransChart Exhibitor Flier
Workshop Web Site

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20th Annual UNOS Transplant Conference

Friday, January 15, 2010

Business First of Columbus – by Carrie Ghose

Nearly a year after its spinoff from Ohio State University, a software developer wants more market share among the nation’s 250 organ transplant centers and to expand to other chronic conditions such as HIV, cancer and diabetes.

TransChart LLC, which makes software to manage a lifetime of follow-up care for patients, has been restructured by Brecksville-based Advent Investment Group Inc., which acquired the company in April for $10,000 and the assumption of debt.

TransChart can make faster decisions when answering only to investors instead of committees in a $4 billion university, said General Manager Jeff Sneddon.

“We became more nimble,” he said.

The company is aiming for 25 percent revenue growth and hoping to add two jobs this year and about a dozen in 2011, Sneddon said. He declined to disclose annual revenue for TransChart.

TransChart was one of three for-profit entities in the defunct UMC Partners, created to nurture spinoffs from Ohio State medical research. UMC Partners owed a nearly $5 million loan after a plan to build a proton therapy center in Dublin failed. Trustees approved a $5.7 million line of credit two years ago to end the operation.

The university hopes to make that back by selling off the affiliates or through its investment in them. Ohio State maintains a 12 percent stake in TransChart, said William Shkurti, the school’s senior vice president for business and finance.

“Being tied to the OSU name has been a good thing for us,” Sneddon said.

Since the spinoff, TransChart has launched a version of its product that is hosted on its own computer servers, opening it up to smaller hospitals, Sneddon said. Products for diabetes and bariatric surgery could launch in 2011.

The company might apply for federal stimulus money and could benefit from reform that nudges the system toward efficiency – the way transplant patients typically are handled financially.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in a 2007 report listed Trans-Chart and its chief competitor, Organ Transplant Tracking Record, as helping streamline work at transplant centers.

Organ Transplant Tracking Record, used at more than 70 hospitals, is made by Omaha, Neb.-based HKS Medical Information Systems.

“If there wasn’t another significant player in the market, I would be concerned the market wasn’t real or ready for a product of this nature,” said Advent’s John Townsend, who is leading the TransChart project.

The Ohio-based investors behind the private equity group saw potential in TransChart, he said.

“It was very hard to see why it had not taken off,” he said. “We believe this company will be very successful in more of an entrepreneurial environment.”

When Ohio State folded UMC Partners, it was seeking a buyer for another for-profit company, Prologue Research International Inc., which runs cancer drug trials. It had $8 million in revenue in the year ended June 30, down from $12 million in fiscal 2008, according to OSU auditors.

Contract researcher Encorium Group Inc. out of Pennsylvania offered $13 million in June 2008 for Prologue Research, but lowered the offer to $11.8 million three months later. Prologue Research’s board turned it down. Prologue CEO Tom Ludlam did not return messages seeking comment for this article. The university would consider selling the company if it would add value, Shkurti said.

“The private sector is good at doing what it does for a reason. The public sector is good at doing what it does for a reason,” Shkurti said. “Each time we do this, we learn a little bit.”

UMC’s third company, Gradcis, makes software for child mental health assessments and was absorbed back into the education school.

Testimonials will be coming soon.

“ACHIEVING EFFICIENCIES BY IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE ELECTRONIC PATIENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS”

Jeffrey M. Sneddon, Information Technology Director, and Ronald M. Ferguson, M.D. Ph.D., Executive Director, Comprehensive Transplant Center, The Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus ,Ohio

Purpose: When a patient has end stage organ failure, the only effective therapy is to receive a new organ. Such patients are sent to Transplant Centers and a process is begun. The process involves the collection of a great deal of detailed information, for these are complex patients usually with multiple chronic problems and comorbidities in addition to the failure of the organ. A patient from the time of referral to the transplant and throughout their entire post-transplant course is closely followed by that center. Transplantation represents an accrual market. The size of the patient load and volume being followed are dependent upon the number of new patients transplanted each year entering the system and the success rates of the program itself. If success rates are high and it is a high volume program, a rapidly accruing number of patients are the result. In order to properly evaluate transplants and properly care for these patients, it is essential to have the efficient and organized management and flow of information concerning each of the patients and information about the program itself. This requires a rather sophisticated information system. If such an information system is in place in a transplant program, the quality of patient care (measured by the end results of grafts survival, incidence of acute rejection and patient survival) can be improved. In addition the financial delivery of the care can become more efficient and productive and predictably manageable.

Method: The information system utilizes functions on three levels of activity simultaneously. The first level of function is the day to day patient management of individual patients from the time of their referral until the time of graft loss, death, or leaving the program. This level of activity of the information system function is used on a daily basis by the nurse coordinators, the transplant physicians and the referring physicians via a fully functional browser interface. A second level of function is reports concerning the program. These are useful tools for managing patient flow and organizational management of workflow within the program. It is this level of activity and reporting from which the productivity reports can be generated. There is a third level of functional activity of the information system that is a sophisticated life table analysis of outcomes and a variety of statistical maneuvers that can be performed on the data contained within the database. Such statistical population studies are important for retrospective analysis of patient populations as well as prospective clinical trials.

Results: With yearly increases in referrals, evaluations, transplants, and workload, we have accomplished improved patient access and outcomes by decreasing the time of referral to evaluation and increasing productivity as measured by a work productivity index. Interfaces to medical center systems and outside agencies have significantly improved accuracy and management of large amounts of data that were previously done on paper. Rapid analysis of clinical data using in-built tools provides clinicians with detailed aggregate information about patients and protocols to allow informed decisions to be conducted. It is the considered and strongly held opinion that the efficiency gains in work productivity demonstrated for our program are directly due to the better management of information and the use of our information system. The nurse coordinators, both in the pre-transplant evaluation and listing process as well as the post-transplant follow-up all consider the information system to be an indispensable tool for carrying out their jobs.

Conclusion: Effective use of transplant information systems can lead to efficiencies in productivity, improve patient access and outcomes, and streamline program reporting processes.

Jeffrey M. Sneddon