Entrepreneur draws out the whimsy in health IT
Niko Skievaski, the 28-year-old Madison, Wis., entrepreneur who in late 2013 brought the public Struck by Orca, a whimsical art book based on some of the stranger new ICD-10 codes, has branched out into further health information technology oddities.
What started out as a conversation between friends about odd ICD-10 codes has become a small publishing business called ICD-10 Illustrated, with an oeuvre that includes not only the original book, but also ICD-10 posters, PowerPoint slides and playing cards.
With the long-delayed and muchfeared nationwide ICD-10 conversion come and gone, Skievaski has diversified—last year producing a similar set of products illustrating core measures for Stage 2 meaningful use. Secure messaging, for example, is illustrated with a carrier pigeon, while medication reconciliation depicts a child trying to stick pill bottles in different-shaped holes in a box.
Skievaski is co-founder of Redox, an application programming interface that enables interoperability between electronic health-record systems and other healthcare applications. “We don’t build any applications, but we sort of empower them,” he said. “We’re a pipeline.”
Redox has kept him so busy he’s had little time to devote to growing his publishing empire. So he turned the business over to his parents, who run it out of a couple of rooms in their home. They had recently moved to Madison, where Skievaski’s sister also lives, to be closer to their kids, and got put to work.
“My mom does all of the business development and customer service, and my dad does all the shipping and (order) fulfillment,” Skievaski said.