While an Integration Consultant with ExactTarget, I worked with many clients on building dynamic landing pages utilizing ExactTarget’s robust API.

If you believe targeting an email is important, then targeting a landing page is just as, if not more, important! The email may grasp the readers attention, but bringing them back to a generic website will just lose them again.

In this Winter release, ExactTarget will be launching Landing Pages and Microsites – a fantastic means for marketers to integrate the email to the landing page! As well, the tracking associated with the landing page will also be accessible within the account!

This is another fantastic innovation from a great (Indiana-based) company. ExactTarget is also preparing to go public so keep an eye on them. For those of you wondering… I don’t own shares nor am I compensated for this post. I just really love the company and the products they’ve been putting out!

Eastland Memorial Hospital and Hamlin Memorial Hospital are the latest in a series of head-of-the-pack hospitals that have leveraged the Prognosis Health Information Systems electronic health records solution to qualify for their share of the government’s $27 billion incentive fund.

So far, 14 rural and community hospitals have used the Prognosis HIS solution to meet the federal government’s “meaningful use” requirements.

“With more than a dozen clients successfully attesting to meaningful use already, we are proving that our web native approach can bring about the results that hospitals need,” said Ramsey Evans, CEO of Prognosis HIS. “More importantly, our innovation is supporting our nation’s healthcare IT goals by making it easier for rural and community hospitals to leverage the power of technology.  All of this is happening at a time when larger hospitals are spending millions of dollars and often times multiple years implementing systems from other healthcare information technology companies.”

To qualify for Medicare EHR Incentive Program monies, Eastland and Hamlin demonstrated and documented the meaningful use of certified Prognosis EHR technology by submitting data for 14 Core Set Objectives, five Menu Set Objectives and 15 Clinical Quality Measures to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Attestation System. Other hospitals across the nation that have already verified meaningful use with the Prognosis EHR include: Anson General Hospital, Beacham Memorial Hospital, Bibb Medical Center, Faith Community Hospital, Hemphill County Hospital, Ness County Hospital, Parkview Hospital, Pemiscot Memorial Hospital, Stamford Memorial Hospital, Seymour Hospital, Stonewall Memorial Hospital and Throckmorton County Memorial Hospital.

These healthcare providers are members of a leading group, as only 305 hospitals nationwide have qualified for Medicare incentive funds under the government program, according to a report presented at an October 12th meeting of the Office of the National Coordinator’s Health Information Technology Policy Committee meeting.

Many of the other hospitals that have achieved meaningful use have had EHRs in place for years – and simply had to leverage the systems to meet various meaningful use requirements to qualify for the incentive funds. The hospitals using the Prognosis HIS system, however, just became a part of the digital movement. Most of these providers recently implemented the Prognosis EHR in less than 120 days and then successfully participated in 90 day meaningful use attestations.

Eastland (Texas) Memorial, a 52-bed hospital, for example, entered into a contract with Prognosis HIS in February, went live on the system on June 8, attested September 16 and received an incentive check on October 24.

“We evaluated many systems and we chose Prognosis because it meets the needs of community and rural hospitals so well. Because it is specifically built for our requirements, the software was relatively easy to implement,” said Ted Matthews, Eastland’s CEO. “The fact that Prognosis partnered with us so closely, however, made it possible for us to get through the entire system implementation and meaningful use attestation in just a matter of months, a great achievement considering the fact that implementation alone sometimes drags on for years.”

ChartAccess® Comprehensive EHR is a web-native system and can be delivered via a cloud computing model. Intuitive and easy-to-use, the system offers built-in analytics and health information exchange capabilities, which can help hospitals provide high quality care.

Prognosis HIS also worked closely with Hamlin and Eastland to ensure that the hospitals could meet the government’s meaningful use stipulations.

“Prognosis HIS worked with us every step of the way through the process, holding weekly conference calls and responding to our questions around the clock. They made us feel like we were their only customer – and that made the attestation process a really smooth one,” said Jim Barnett, CEO of 25-bed Hamlin (Texas) Hospital.

In addition, a meaningful use dashboard made it easy to monitor hospital progress in relation to required meaningful use measures such as recording demographic data as structured data for more than 50% of patients, implementing at least one clinical decision support rule and ordering at least one medication order using a computerized provider order entry for at least 30% of patients.

“By offering a ‘disruptive’ system designed specifically for the needs of rural and community hospitals, we are making it possible for these providers to quickly experience EHR success. Traditionally, rural and community hospitals have trailed behind other providers in their implementations of technology but our innovative solution is helping to change the game,” Evans said.

About Prognosis Health Information Systems

Prognosis Health Information Systems (PHIS), Houston, is committed to utilizing advanced 21st-Century technologies to help healthcare providers significantly improve the quality, safety and efficiency of patient care while also achieving better financial results. PHIS enables rural and community hospitals to utilize pure browser-based electronic health record (EHR) and financial systems designed to be fully operational in less than six months at a predictable, affordable cost. For more information, visit www.prognosisHIS.com. Follow us on Twitter (@PrognosisHIS).

Monetate, a website optimization company, has signed a 20,161 square footlease at Quaker Park in Conshohocken, PA.

Brad Speigal of Skyline Commercial represented Monetate in this transaction. Binswanger represented Quaker Park, which is owned by The Buccini/Pollin Group, Inc.

Known as the original “Brick Mill Building,” Quaker Park is a 202,046 square foot Class A office building located at 1001 East Hector St, two miles from the intersection of I-76 and I-476 and 20 minutes from Center City Philadelphia. Situated along theSchuylkill River, the property has undergone a major renovation that included all common areas and lobbies, additional parking areas and new landscaping.

The SEPTA R6 Spring Mill Station and SEPTA Bus Route 97 are located on the site. The Valley Forge-to-Philadelphia walk/bike/jog trail cuts through the property as well. A number of hotels and restaurants are within walking distance, including such restaurants as Coyote Crossing and Totaro’s Italian Restaurant. There are also two major shopping centers less than two miles away that include a Target Greatland, Barnes & Noble, The Gap, Giant Food and Office Depot.

If you want a good success story to learn from, consider this: Hempsons Solicitors, the UK’s largest specialist health and social care legal practice, saw its network response times increase by 200 percent at peak periods.

Sound like something you would want more of? Officials credited a new WAN optimization tool from provider Exinda with helping them improve that. In fact, Brett Raymond, IT director at Hempsons, told industry observer Stuart Sumner that network performance, specifically data replication, “improved by around 70 percent overall.”

We’re guessing you could do with such an improvement. You wouldn’t mind terribly? It would be nice to bring your response times down even if they’re not quite as ghastly as that, surely.

The firm found that their 270 Citrix users at remote sites were “experiencing poor network performance, especially when they needed to use printing services,” according to Raymond, who said when he looked into it, he found that the packet-shaping technology was “outdated, and users were complaining about response times.”

So they tried Exinda on an analyst’s recommendation, and found it worked pretty well. So well, that they wanted to see what else it could do.

“Later we started using it for data replication – that’s when we saw the 70 percent decrease in data going across the LAN. That saved us investing in new infrastructure,” Raymond noted, adding that “we were able to look at the data going across the WAN, and we could tweak the bandwidth as we saw fit. We gave Citrix traffic the lion’s share of bandwidth and then printing.”

Bottom line, everybody’s happy without a huge outlay of cash: “Our Citrix users now enjoy excellent application delivery performance. We have achieved this without having to spend more money additional bandwidth.”

And that’s a great bottom line to have.

A recent E-Mail Marketing Services Vendor Landscape report published by Info-Tech Research Group ranked Silverpop and ExactTarget as Champions in the E-Mail Marketing Services market.

Advances in consumer tracking, segmentation, and marketing automation by E-Mail Marketing Services have elevated success rates for email marketing campaigns to a very high level.

“E-Mail marketing technologies have evolved from point solutions into comprehensive systems that allow organizations to integrate with social media campaigns, track consumer behavior and engage current and potential clients with tailored and customized interactions,” said George Goodall, Senior Analyst with Info-Tech Research Group. “With these advancements the average ROI of e-mail marketing initiatives is a striking 256% and only 4% of users report that no benefits are attained.”

Silverpop has established a strong reputation in the e-mail marketing space by offering a wide variety of options and value-added services. Silverpop has some of the most advanced features available among the vendors evaluated. Silverpop’s Engage 8.3’s functionality and value catches the eye of high profile clients such as Red Bull, Cisco and BBC.

ExactTarget was also listed as a Champion in the report. They cater to small firms as well as large and have intensive e-mail users among their client list such as Expedia and Groupon. Scoring well in the advanced features category and having a low cost associated with the product means enterprises with an ambitious e-mail marketing plan and a modest budget will appreciate their offering.

As usage of social media tools with consumers rises year over year, integration with social media becomes the new frontier for E-Mail Marketing Services. Lyris, Experian CheetahMail and Yesmail were highlighted as Innovators in the market, surpassing other vendors in social media integration capabilities. Lyris offers an intriguing iPhone app to govern marketing campaigns as well as options for both in-the-cloud and on-premise solutions. Experian CheetahMail has a large global footprint and uses platform-agnostic technology, allowing for easy integration with loyalty programs, CRM platforms, and analytics programs. Yesmail offers the ability to integrate with social media, build landing pages, and nurture leads through the cross-channel marketing platform.

For the full list of Info-Tech Research Group’s recommendations for selecting an E-mail Marketing Services vendor, visit: http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/select-an-e-mail-marketing-services-vendor

Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscape reports recognize outstanding vendors in the technology marketplace. Assessing vendors by the strength of their offering and their strategy for the enterprise, Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscapes pay tribute to the contribution of exceptional vendors in a particular category.

About Info-Tech Research Group

With a paid membership of over 8,000 organizations worldwide, Info-Tech Research Group (http://www.infotech.com) is the global leader in providing tactical, practical Information Technology research and analysis. Info-Tech Research Group has a thirteen-year history of delivering quality research and is North America’s fastest growing full-service IT analyst firm.