MIE was incorporated in 1995, primarily to implement the goals of a white paper by Doug Horner, “The Medical Web Project.” The thrust of the white paper was that a secure, private communications network—based on Internet technology, yet independent of the Internet—was needed to allow physicians, medical groups, hospitals, and insurance companies to transmit electronic information among themselves.

The idea took off quickly and soon became known as the MedWeb—a subscription service created without major backing from any individual special interest, committed to the concept of creating an infrastructure that allowed physicians to route information the same way they route referrals. Six years later, roughly 80 percent of area physicians are MedWeb subscribers. They use the service to securely transmit clinical billing information, patient-health information, radiographic images and reports, dictation and transcription—and even the traffic generated by the software products of MIE’s competitors.

During the MedWeb’s initial growth years, subscribers regularly asked MIE to create specialty software applications to interface with proprietary systems—to package, send, and receive information, and to handle various aspects of medical- office workflow the industry had yet to address. MIE answered the call. The company chose (and remained committed to) a single architecture, using open databases and web-based design tools. The result of MIE’s efforts, WebChart, comprises multiple modules that interact seamlessly—yet are fully available within Internet Explorer® or Netscape®—without the need to load software on individual PCs.

To this day, MIE remains dedicated to the healthcare industry. We seek to improve our solutions to the benefit of hospital systems, medical practices, and patients. MIE regularly participates in community-based endeavors to improve the quality of care for underserved patients, as well as outcome-based research programs to measure the impact of medical informatics technology on patient care. In its efforts to train future informatics experts, and its donation of software components and expertise to non-profit organizations, MIE is recognized as a good corporate citizen.