Dave Chase

There’s perhaps no industry as screwed up in America as health care. And Dave Chase, who helped create the healthcare business at Microsoft during his 12-year tenure, is now looking to help fix it through a new Seattle startup company called Avado. Chase has allied with Bassam Saliba, another former Microsoft veteran who played key technical roles at companies such as Fidesic and Scalix.

Launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, Chase said that Avado is attempting to institute more “patient centric” systems, kind of like a Mint.com for health care.

“The key insight for our business is that healthcare works best and costs least when there’s a partnership between the patient and their healthcare provider,” Chase tells GeekWire. “Empowering that partnership is our core focus.”

Interestingly, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra echoed that opportunity in remarks made earlier this month in Seattle when he spoke at the Technology Alliance annual luncheon.

“The race is on to see who will invent the best solutions to keep me healthy, to keep your families healthy,” Chopra said. “And in the process of doing so will make a ridiculous amount of money.”

Obviously, Chase — who most recently served as vice president of sales and marketing at Seattle-based WhatCounts — wants to join that race.

“The health payment system of healthcare is the core reason for the hyperinflation that exists in healthcare. It’s fundamentally broken,” said Chase, adding that Avado plans to streamline the way patient’s and health care providers interact with data.

Just as Mint.com transformed personal finances for many Americans, Chase believes Avado can do much the same for health records.

Of course, one of the very large players in the space is Chase’s former employer: Microsoft. It operates HealthVault, and Chase notes that it is natural to think that they would be competitive since it too helps patients connect with health records. But Chase said that Microsoft largely focuses on big enterprises like hospitals and health systems.

“In contrast, Avado’s focus is at the other end of the continuum,” he said. That includes small health and wellness providers such as doctors, health coaches and personal trainers.

At this point, Chase said that health care providers such as National Surgery Network and MedLion have already chosen to work with Avado.

“Naturally, the current health IT solutions are designed for the status quo,” he said. Chase said that they are hoping to help define a new area of health care, known as “Patient Relationship Management” or PRM.

“It’s sort of a Salesforce.com for healthcare with the key difference being that the customer, also known as the patient or person, is also using the system,” he said. “Naturally, we hope to be the market leader for PRM.”

Chase has been living in Oregon for the past few years, but he’s planning to move back to Seattle in order to run Avado.

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