Data exchange. In telecom the service NaviNet provides might be called data backhaul. Sounds bland, but mastering the passage of data between parties -- from a hospital to a payer and back again -- is the Gold Rush in the industry. NaviNet will say its business look like this: it pulls data from a provider and sends it to a payer to help doctors check benefits-eligibility on patients in their care. It also pushes data from payers down to doctors, to give them "decision support" in "real time." McKesson's ADM, run by Zubiller, does this, too. But these descriptions fail to convey the consequence of the business. We'll use an analogy. Healthcare looks a bit like the cable industry of the 1980's: Lots of independent systems, each valuable for their control over regional networks, made up of a few central hubs, with thousands of consumers at end of the line. Control of the systems that shepherd data across these networks is the play, not control of the data itself. That's why it looks like the cable business. He who plays the John Malone of healthcare -- "rolling up" the channels rather than the bits -- will get rich. Which brings us back to Morrison. An IT buff, he founded NaviNet (as NaviMedix) in 1998. And the reason we think he has a shot: he already has 750,000 "partners." Morrison was previously a general partner at the venture firm Firepond Partners, where he focused on healthcare IT. He also worked in business development and marketing with Spectrum (a joint venture between IBM and Baxter) and McDonnell Douglas Health Systems.

To Healthcare Finance News:

“As an industry, we’ve always jumped to the end-stage – without looking at the process in between."