After Hours Doctor’s Office shows potential for savings in healthcare visits

Research Triangle Park, NC – March 6, 2007 – StrikeIron Inc., the leading provider of live data and business functionality over the web and O’Reilly Media, Inc. announced the winner of the first ever Telephony Mashup Contest that took place during the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference (ETel). The winning entry was After Hours Doctor’s Office, a mashup created by Thomas Howe Consulting, transcribes voicemail into text and sends SMS to doctors. RoboCal from Ted Gilchrist of Botcast Network placed second and FishLign from Claire Umeda and Dharmesh Desai of Lignup placed third.The contest provided a stage for developers to demonstrate their creative skills using emerging telephony technologies such as VoiceXML, SIP phones, VoIP, hosted PBX & IVR services, and Web services. StrikeIron, O’Reilly, Tellme Networks, Inc. and Sylantro sponsored the contest, with winners splitting $3,000 in prizes. For a complete list of winners and finalists, visit www.strikeiron.com/developers/contest_finalists.aspx.After Hours Doctor’s Office tries to solve the problem faced by all healthcare providers—that of unnecessary visits to the ER. “Research shows that over 50 percent of the 90 million visits to emergency rooms were unnecessary,” said mashup contest winner Thomas Howe. “In healthcare dollars, that means that 40.5 million people paid up to three times as much for routine care at the ER as they would have paid at a physician’s office. AfterHoursDoctorOffice hopes to eliminate some of these unnecessary trips to the ER by providing a service between doctors and patients for after hours care.”The mashup was built using Tellme‘s VoiceXML platform for the inbound call, the outbound status messages and to record and post the patient voice message; StrikeIron Global SMS for the text messaging between patient, nurse and doctor; and Amazon Web Services to setup the bank of nurses making determinations of urgency, and to transcribe the original voicemail by the patient for the permanent medical record. The entire application was built in just 40 hours. For more on this mashup and to view a demo, visit http://www.thomashowe.com.“Enterprise mashups are coming of age as developers realize the amount of live data that is available over the Web,” said Bob Brauer, president and CEO of StrikeIron. “The mashups presented at ETel are just the beginning of what companies will start to see as developers combine information from Web services, messaging systems, internal business intelligence applications and external data sources to deliver real value. Congratulations to all the mashup developers on their innovative ideas.”

About O’Reilly

O’Reilly conferences bring together forward-thinking business and technology leaders, shaping ideas and influencing industries around the globe. For over 25 years, O’Reilly has facilitated the adoption of new and important technologies by the enterprise, putting emerging technologies on the map. For more information about O’Reilly conferences, visit:http://conferences.oreillynet.com.O’Reilly Media, Inc. spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly has been a chronicler and catalyst of leading-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism. For more information about O’Reilly, visit: http://www.oreilly.com

About StrikeIron

StrikeIron is the leader in Data as a Service(DaaS), facilitating the consumption and distribution of live data and business functionality over the Web. The company’s breakthrough Web Services Marketplace provides a technology platform, micro-transaction management and a consistent interface across many XML-based Web services from multiple, diverse sources. This allows end-users and ISVs to customize and integrate external data sources and additional external functionality into enterprise, Web, and composite applications. Currently, StrikeIron provides over 100 live data sources and business functions as well as a set of products and tools to simplify and accelerate the consumption of data such as StrikeIron’s SOA Express, enabling business users to access live data via front office applications. StrikeIron services over 700 customers and partners such as BEA, IBM, Honda Europe, D&B, Time Warner, Siemens, Nike, Kenwood, and Exclusive Resorts. For more information, visit www.strikeiron.com. ###StrikeIron, StrikeIron Web Services Marketplace, StrikeIron Marketplace Powered and Web Services Marketplace are trademarks of StrikeIron, Inc. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders.

About Tellme

Tellme improves how people use their phone to search for everyday answers – from finding a business, getting a sports score or hearing the latest weather update. By bringing voice access to Internet information, Tellme is making it quick and easy to find what you need when you’re on-the-go.Today the company powers hundreds of phone services used by more than 40 million people every month. In addition to providing a consumer mobile search service, Tellme also uses it’s platform to power phone applications such as directory assistance (411) for Cingular and Verizon, customer service for Merrill Lynch, E*TRADE Financial and American Airlines, and e-commerce services for Amazon.com and Fandango. Tellme is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

About Sylantro

Sylantro Systems provides the premier software platform for business, consumer, and mobile hosted VoIP solutions. Sylantro allows network operators to rapidly deliver high value, high margin managed telephony services without the cost and complexity of today’s in house PBX and key systems, giving users new flexibility in their communication services. Sylantro customers include AT&T, Bandwidth.com, China Netcom, China Unicom, Covad, StarHub, SunRocket, and Swisscom. 

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 5:05 pm | Filed Under News |

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