Posted on Fri, Sep 10, 2010
September 15-16 in Ellicott City MD
Baltimore, MD: Ankota will be exhibiting at the Maryland National Capital Homecare Association (MNCHA) Annual Meeting on September 15th and 16th. The conference will be held at The Hotel at Turf Valley in Ellicott City MD. The theme for the annual conference is “Planning our Bright Future”
In addition to exhibiting, Ankota CTO Ken Accardi will deliver a presentation entitled “Technology and Inbound Marketing Booster
Shot,” which will teach the participants how to get better results from their web sites and about new technologies they should be aware of. Ken will join other speaking faculty for the conference including Bill Dombi from the National Association of Home Care and Hospice (NAHC) and The Honorable John M. Colmers, secretary for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygeine.
“Although Ankota has a national focus, MNCHA is our hometown show,” explained Ankota CEO Will Hicklen. “We’re also excited that [Ankota CTO] Ken Accardi will be presenting. He’s so good at making technology simple to understand.”
MNCHA’s members include home nursing companies, private duty care companies and suppliers of home medical equipment (HME). In this tough economic year, Ankota is able to offer solutions that improves the efficiency of each of these business lines, as follows:
- For HME Delivery, Ankota offers planning and route optimization software that reduces planning time, miles drive, fuel consumption and paperwork, ultimately enabling an organization to take on more customers with the same staff.
- For Private Care, Ankota offers a comprehensive business management suite, all running on the web, the enables planning, real-time care-giver tracking with telephony, and billing.
- For specialty nursing and home physical therapy, Ankota coordinates care delivery across disciplines and records clinical documentation on tablet computers.
- Ankota also offers FamilyConnect to help keep family members apprised of their loved ones care.
You can learn more about Ankota at www.ankota.com or by calling 800.909.9866.
About Ankota
Ankota is a leading service provider of innovative, technology-based software for home care management. The company is a pioneer of next generation SaaS solutions for Healthcare Delivery Management (HDM), Private Duty, Durable Medical Equipment (DME), Physical Therapy and Home Infusion markets. Ankota is committed to improving the quality and efficiency of health care outside the hospital setting.
Ankota's suite of solutions includes: "delivery model" optimization - automating complex scheduling requirements; telephony and web-based tracking of patient visits and health status; paperless trails for supervision and audits; billing systems integration; and accurate, real-time reporting. Ankota's Family Connect, a secure web-based tool, ensures patient families are always one click away from knowing their relative's health and well-being.
Founded in 2008, Ankota, Inc. is based in Baltimore, Maryland with offices in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Minneapolis. For more information please go to http://www.ankota.com/.
Posted on Mon, Aug 23, 2010
November 15th – 18th in Atlanta GA
Baltimore, MD: Ankota looks forward to exhibiting at the MedTrade Conference and Expo from November 15th – 18th. The conference will be held at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
MedTrade prides itself on “Connecting the HME Industry.” Their conference, entitled THE NATIONAL HOME HEALTH CARE EXPOSITION TM continues to be the leader in serving the home health care marketplace by providing a forum to bring buyers and sellers together while offering educational development programs.
“Ankota’s solution is exactly what the HME industry needs at this time,” explained Ankota CEO Will Hicklen. “Ankota offsets the extreme reimbursement pressure DME companies are facing by giving them the tools to increase their delivery capacity without increasing cost.” Ankota’s software solution achieves this by providing delivery schedule optimization that saves the agency money in five different ways:
- Assignments and routes are automatically calculated, saving each driver 45 minutes or more per day
- Delivery routes are optimized, reducing driving miles, driving time, fuel costs and vehicle costs
- Real-time changes to schedules can be accommodates with a drag-and-drop interface and simple tools to deal with emergency deliveries throughout the day.
- Status is tracked in real-time, allowing back office workers to manage by exception rather than needing to follow-up on each delivery. Ultimately this enables each back office worker to manage more field resources and can enable the agency to increase territories or product lines
- The hosted solution with a growing number of automated integrations to inventory and billing systems eliminates the need for ongoing IT staff support
You can download an Ankota DME product brochure here.
Please visit Ankota at booth 230.
About MedTrade
Medtrade and Medtrade Spring are produced by Nielsen Business Media, a part of the Nielsen Company. Nielsen Business Media is a full service event management company that professionally operates, arranges, organizes and sponsors trade shows, expositions, conferences, conventions and meetings for associations, corporations and government entities. Nielsen is also one of the world's largest leading publishing and information companies and has leading marketing positions in consumer magazines, directories and information services, business information as well as educational publishing.
About Ankota
Ankota is a leading service provider of innovative, technology-based software for home care management. The company is a pioneer of next generation SaaS solutions for Healthcare Delivery Management (HDM), Private Duty, Durable Medical Equipment (DME), Physical Therapy and Home Infusion markets. Ankota is committed to improving the quality and efficiency of health care outside the hospital setting.
Ankota's suite of solutions includes: "delivery model" optimization - automating complex scheduling requirements; telephony and web-based tracking of patient visits and health status; paperless trails for supervision and audits; billing systems integration; and accurate, real-time reporting. Ankota's Family Connect, a secure web-based tool, ensures patient families are always one click away from knowing their relative's health and well-being.
Founded in 2008, Ankota, Inc. is based in Baltimore, Maryland with offices in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Minneapolis. For more information please go to http://www.ankota.com/.
Posted on Mon, Aug 09, 2010
Combining Peer Support with Disease Management to Improve Drug Addiction Recovery Outcomes
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND (August 9, 2010) - Ankota, Inc., a Healthcare SaaS company, submitted an application to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Grant. The SBIR program was created, in the words of program founder Roland Tibbets: "to provide funding for some of the best early-stage innovation ideas -- ideas that, however promising, are still too high risk for private investors, including venture capital firms." For the purposes of the SBIR program, the term "small business" is defined as a for-profit business with fewer than 500 employees, owned by one or more individuals who are citizens of, or permanent resident aliens in, the United States of America.
Ankota's grant application is entitled "Improving Peer Based Addiction Recovery Management through Information Technology." The premise of the research is that recovery from addiction is a long process that requires more than just addition recovery. It also requires treatment of medical needs, and social needs to drive the lifestyle and behavior change that will ultimately lead to full recovery. The approach combines peer support (such as Narcotics Anonymous [NA]) and disease management techniques (used for acute issue recovery and chronic disease care). This provides a framework for complete addiction recovery, but since it can take three to five years, automation is critical to keep things on track.
Collaborating with Ankota are the following:
- Dr. J. Hunter Young, MD - Johns Hopkins
- Dr. Maxine Stitzer - Johns Hopkins
- The Center for Health Information and Decision Support (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland
Ankota's mission is to improve the quality and efficiency of care delivery outside of the hospital. Ankota's commercial products are designed for home care agencies (private duty, home health, home physical therapy, home respiratory therapy, home infusion therapy, respiratory therapy, and medical equipment deliver including DME/HME). This research extends home care to the new discipline of peer-based addiction recovery.
"It's exciting to apply our technology to leading edge medical research," explained Ankota Chief Technology Officer Ken Accardi. "Plus we're confident that these models of care management will become both critical and prevalent when healthcare reform increases care coverage through Medicaid starting in 2014."
About Ankota: Ankota is a leading service provider of innovative, technology-based software for home care management. The company is a pioneer of next generation SaaS solutions for Healthcare Delivery Management (HDM), Private Duty, Durable Medical Equipment (DME), and Home Infusion markets. Ankota is committed to improving the quality and efficiency of health care outside the hospital setting.
Ankota's suite of solutions includes: "delivery model" optimization - automating complex scheduling requirements; telephony and web-based tracking of patient visits and health status; paperless trails for supervision and audits; billing systems integration; and accurate, real-time reporting. Ankota's Family Connect, a secure web-based tool, ensures patient families are always one click away from knowing their relative's health and well-being.
Founded in 2008, Ankota, Inc. is based in Baltimore, Maryland with offices in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Minneapolis. For more information please go to http://www.ankota.com/.
Posted on Wed, May 05, 2010
Ankota's rapid rise and relentless focus on ROI for its customers is recognized in SmartCEO Magazine's Annual Circle of Excellence Awards
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND - "We are thrilled to be named the HOT STARTUP by SmartCEO Magazine," said company CEO and co-founder, Will Hicklen. "SmartCEO follows the most dynamic companies in the Mid-Atlantic region-this is an exciting recognition that we are growing a successful company that addresses immediate needs for home healthcare companies," said Hicklen. SmartCEO's Circle of Excellence Awards event will be held on May 12, 2010 at the Intercontinental Harbor Court Hotel in Baltimore from 6:00-9:00p.m. Several customers and leaders in the healthcare community will join Ankota in the celebration.
"The secret to Ankota's early success is its relentless focus on immediate ROI for its clients-something the struggling healthcare industry can embrace," writes Jeanine Clingenpeel in the May 2010 feature story. Ankota's technology is usually self-funding in the first quarter of use. Customers typically see immediate reductions in certain operating expenses, increase their capacity with existing staff, and accelerate billing by days or even weeks.
"Circle of Excellence winners are not only selected and honored for their accomplishments, but for demonstrating success in applying unique leadership attributes that significantly benefits their business and the community," said Craig Burris, Publisher at SmartCEO Magazine. "We are honored to recognize Will Hicklen as one of Greater Baltimore's standout leaders." The full article is available online http://www.smartceo.com/content/digitalba0510
Hicklen credits the company's early success to an all-star leadership team that includes Dr. Hunter Young, a physician at Johns Hopkins and the company's Chief Medical Officer, Ken Accardi, Chief Technology Officer and veteran CIO from GE Healthcare, and Marc Ottinger, formerly of Anderson Consulting, who is COO. Ankota is Hicklen's fourth software startup, the last, iLumin, was successfully sold to Computer Associates.
The idea for Ankota came to Will while helping his wife, Sandy, during her three year battle with cancer. Hicklen's frustrations over coordinating her care illuminated an inefficient system with tremendous opportunity to improve care planning and execution.
His 20+ years experience with supply chain technologies and business performance management gave him a unique perspective. "There are great people in healthcare who are very committed to what they do, but they are saddled with a system that forces them to spend time doing unproductive things. This is incredibly inefficient and costly to the system." Adding, "These are problems that we have solved in other industries."
About Ankota: Ankota is the pioneering company in the field of Healthcare Delivery Management (HDM), focused on improving the quality and efficiency of health care outside of the hospital. HDM is a process-centric, technology-enabled approach to managing the "delivery model," automating complex scheduling requirements and optimizing scarce resources such as people, time, equipment, and supplies.
Customers include Home Health Care, Private Duty, Home Infusion, Respiratory Therapy, Home Medical Equipment (HME/DME) providers, and more.
Founded in 2008 and launched in 2009, Ankota, Inc. is based in Baltimore, Maryland with offices in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis. For more information please go to http://ankota.com
Posted on Fri, Apr 30, 2010
The news article below was released by Ankota customer Chesapeake Medical Staffing, who are using Ankota's Private Duty Agency software to expand their business.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND (April 20, 2010) - In today's challenging climate, with hospitals less busy than in past years and with labor more abundant due to the recession, the focus is clearly on ways to cut costs. This trend creates a unique situation for companies such as Chesapeake Medical Staffing because the demand for outsourcing in the hospital sector has decreased yet the need for expert medical help has not. Chesapeake Medical Staffing announced today that they will be significantly expanding their business into the home care and private duty sectors.
"We must be able to reinvent ourselves and meet the new needs of the changing healthcare industry, so that we remain relevant and necessary. In order to move forward and find new markets for our business, we have made a decision to expand into the home care and private duty sectors, which will be booming in the coming years," said Terri Weller, President and Chief Clinical Officer. She added," We already have highly trained nurses, many of whom are experts in acute care, so they can easily transfer into the home care setting."
Chesapeake Medical Staffing currently has technology and software that works effectively for hospital staffing, but with this expansion, needed specific technology that will address home care and private duty. Creating new technology can be costly and take time to develop so Chesapeake Medical Staffing conducted research and found Ankota, Inc., a national company offering Healthcare Delivery Management (HDM) that could be implemented right away because it is Software-as-a-Service.
"In this competitive market, many companies are seeking much needed technology to help them save money and be more profitable. We are able to help immediately. Ankota helps with care planning, scheduling, resource optimization, resource tracking with multiple devices including mobile phones, In addition, Ankota allows for real-time escalation of care concerns, tracking and paperless reporting "says Ankota CEO and co-founder, Will Hicklen. "It's a great partnership and allows us to help our clients achieve their ultimate mission, better patient care."
Posted on Wed, Jan 06, 2010
Baltimore, MD: Ankota CEO was recently interviewed by host John Palmer on Retirement Living TV (RLTV). In the interview, Will talks about specific problems solved by Ankota, such as reducing the driving mileage and paperwork in home care agencies. Will also shares how personal experiences with the care of his wife and mother led to the creation of Ankota.
"RLTV is a great resource producing outstanding content," exclaimed Hicklen, "we're pleased to have had a chance to share our message on their network."
About RLTV
Retirement Living TV (RLTV) is the only cable network dedicated to serving adults 50+ by providing information and entertainment relevant to their needs and lifestyles. RLTV's Emmy award-winning programming focuses on everything from healthcare, finance, travel, lifestyle, comedy, and drama. Visit RLTV online at http://www.rl.tv/
About Ankota
Ankota is the pioneering company in the field of Healthcare Delivery Management (HDM). Ankota provides Home Care Software Solutions delivered via the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model that improves efficiency and compliance within Home Healthcare Operations. All Ankota solutions are designed with inputs from the home care community with the goal to provide better patient care in a provider-friendly manner. For more information, please visit www.ankota.com.