US Oncology looks for EHR upgrades under McKesson

An overlooked aspect of McKesson Corp.'s acquisition of US Oncology is what the $2.16 billion deal announced last week means for iKnowMed, the US Oncology-owned and marketed cancer-care electronic health-record system that is reported to be used by more than 900 oncologists.

US Oncology physician Nicholas Vogelzang, chair and medical director of Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada, said he expects McKesson to put some of its IT resources toward upgrading iKnowMed, which he described as having strong decision-support tools but workflow-slowing data-entry procedures.

Vogelzang said he sees the merger with McKesson as an opportunity to boost iKnowMed's operations and sales. He said the system, which US Oncology purchased in 2004, has "incredible analytic capacity." And although—according to Vogelzang—it's only one of US Oncology's 26 business lines, Roy Beveridge, US Oncology executive vice president and medical director, said he expects that iKnowMed will see growth after the McKesson acquisition.

"We're not a software development company; we're not a systems development company; but we believe McKesson is superlative in those developmental areas," Beveridge said. "We have to believe that, by aligning with them, that our aspirations from an IT standpoint will be dramatically improved."

The problems seen with iKnowMed appear to be similar to those observed in other oncology EHR systems, according to a report issued in September by KLAS, an Orem, Utah-based health IT market research firm. "Oncology is a tough technology market due to operational crossovers, complex protocols and the difference in requirements between medical and radiation oncology—system replacements are rare and come primarily as a result of consolidated practices," according to KLAS' news release on the report.

"The oncology market has been ignored by enterprise software vendors for the most part," report author Monique Rasband said in the release. "Oncology seems to be on the roadmap for most vendors, but few have made much progress, and their functionality doesn't seem to be meant for use as a full oncology platform."