TECH: Lost in the memory hole at McKesson

I’ve given my view on RelayHealth before—Nice product but apparently no physician or actual patient demand for it, well not enough that would have sustained a real business that didn’t get unbelievably lucky with its financing in the dotcom days. Now McKesson has bought it to roll it into their health management side that includes the old Access Health and a whole lot of other stuff. If you wnt to read more take a look at this Modern Healthcare article which by its title, McKesson deal gives docs new PHR purveyor, seems to think that RelayHealth is a PHR (stop laughing you at the back).

But what fascinates me is how this stuff happens in Corporate America. In 2000 McKesson purcahsed a company called Medivation. Medivation was tossed into its iMckesson subsidiary and obviously didn’t make it out alive. But the key point is that Medivation’s technology—at last when they bought it—did exactly what RelayHealth’s (the then Healinx) did. Given that neither of them has established much in the way of what you’d recognize as market share or profitability—cue yet more angry emails from Relay Health’s lovely marketing people—I assume McKesson is buying RelayHealth for the technology not to double up on market share. So that means whatever Medivation had has since been lost. And those of us who remember iMckesson may find this line from the story strangely familiar.

In addition to RelayHealth, McKesson's personal health systems include in-home patient monitoring, web portal technology, triage software and personal emergency response systems. The full suite will include products and services from recently acquired HealthCom Partners, LLC, which provides patient billing solutions designed to simplify and enhance financial interactions between healthcare providers and their patients.

Longtime McKesson observers may not be too surprised —after all I don’t use their products, I just get my cues on their lack of interoperability that from HISTalk. But what I’d like to know is who’s getting fired for buying the same thing twice? For that matter when’s Charlie McCall finally going on trial for screwing up McKesson in the first place? It’s 7 years since that happened? Answers on a post card….

Coda: My best guess is that RelayHealth had c. $40m in funding in rounds C, D & E, so perhaps $45m overall. Now that no one’s feelings can get hurt, and now that the health care Internet is sexy again, I wonder whether their investors got out whole. I assume that we’ll find out in the next 10Q. Any guesses in the comments?