Can the PayPal Mafia Fix Health Care?

Last week, the Health 2.0 venture Practice Fusion held its second annual Connect conference in San Francisco. Practice Fusion is an exciting business for a few reasons:

1. It provides a free electronic health record (EHR) to physicians and allied health providers.
2. It's completely independent of the "legacy" health-care business. (Competitors include stalwarts AllScripts and Cerner).
3. It's attracted investment from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and similarly enterprising tech venture capitalists.  It's now got $40 million of capital.
4. It's lead by a classically heroic entrepreneur: Ryan Howard ran the company on his own credit card for four years, nearly missing payroll, and was only saved by a legal payout related to a motorcycle accident).
5. It got Dr. Farshad Mostafari, MD, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, to give a speech (via Skype) praising private enterprise in Health IT.  And he's an Obama appointee!

There's a lot to like about Practice Fusion.  Read the entire article at Forbes.com's The Apothecary.