Technology a differentiator in personal injury practice
IN Partnership with
Firms that leverage modern solutions have an edge in evolving practice area
More
THE RECENT Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer Survey found that over three-quarters of lawyers believe technology will have the most significant impact on their business over the next three years, but only 33% say they’re ready for this change or are able to move forward with tech adoption. For personal injury lawyers and law firms specifically, this challenge is even more acute, as most don’t have the luxury of innovation departments or large IT teams and instead rely on turnkey technology solutions to drive business efficiency and service delivery gains.
Medchart has established itself as a key partner for
Personal injury and class action law firms of all sizes trust Medchart as their single turnkey solution for their claimant and health record needs. We simplify and accelerate your ability to access and interpret health information for your files and cases. We provide full service retrieval, record summarization and claimant qualification at scale across North America.
Find out more
What Medchart delivers
“Basically we’re taking the industry’s archaic processes and automating them with modern-day solutions – we’re looking toward the future, and bringing mass torts along with us”
Damon Spiceland,
Medchart
streamlining the medical record and data retrieval process. The Toronto-based company is used by more than 180 Canadian law firms, including leading national and regional personal injury and class-action firms, and “to date, we’ve been at the leading edge of innovation to help firms obtain records and billing data efficiently,” says Anand Ablack, VP, business development, legal.
“For 2022, we’re broadening our capabilities in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, expanding our digital data connections, and focusing on helping Canadian firms take on larger, more complex actions like class actions and mass tort.”
New partnership leverages AI, NLP
For injury-based torts, law firm staff routinely review thousands of pages of claimant medical, pharmacy, billing, and other records – a critical but traditionally very manual and labour-intensive process. Medchart’s recently announced partnership with New York-based DigitalOwl, a fellow innovator in the space offering a machine learning platform that interprets medical records, looks to address this common pain point.
After uploading scanned medical records to the platform, DigitalOwl generates a focused medical summary dataset with multiple filtering options and easy-to-use navigation. It puts the most relevant data at the user’s fingertips in a fraction of the usual time, aligning with Medchart’s vision of leveraging technology such as AI and NLP to streamline work for the personal injury bar.
“With DigitalOwl, we provide our customers with medical record summarization technology at the click of a button from within the Medchart interface they use now,” says Ablack. “And, most importantly, they will receive the critical medical data insights and analytics in hours, not days – it’s a real game-changer.”
Data as a differentiator
Medchart is laser-focused on moving beyond traditional manual medical retrieval and follow-up to secure an expanding collection of electronic medical and other data sources to deliver the information personal injury firms need faster. It leverages data to inform case strategy and automate the task of identifying key qualifiers, such as a
Client Name: Jane Doe
client’s conditions, impairments, medications, and drug devices, and Medchart is currently chasing new data to expand its reach.
Currently, Medchart counts over 100M+ patients and thousands of providers, including hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies across North America, that it has linked via direct digital connections to electronic health information networks and individual institutions.
Beyond plugging into new connections, Medchart is also repurposing data for use in specific, scalpel-like ways. Existing data sources can contribute to value-added work around mass torts, as reflected by Medchart’s success at medical data retrieval and record review for the Purdue opioid docket. In Purdue, Medchart identified patterns of use to help qualify more claimants (who could show they had been prescribed Purdue drugs, in this case) and bump others into higher compensation tiers (those who could show they were prescribed the drug for more than six months).
Medchart looks at data differently, says Damon Spiceland, head of mass tort operations. Understanding that bad data at the input stage negatively affects throughput and output, Medchart differentiated itself in Purdue using data hygiene, which allowed matching of PII data to correct bad data. This, accompanied by access to historical databases such as pharmacy data, provided unique data that was otherwise unrecoverable in many cases. This allowed Medchart to pull nationwide historical data across all big-box pharmacies and expedite an archaic process, reducing cost and inefficiencies. The goal is to bring to Canadian firms those same capabilities to drive business benefit and inform case strategy.
“For 2022, we’re broadening our capabilities in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, expanding our digital data connections, and focusing on helping Canadian firms take on larger, more complex actions”
Anand Ablack,
Medchart
“The legal industry is making huge decisions based on data-driven intelligence,” Spiceland says. “By utilizing docket protection, we’re able to take a peek within the data universe and find common data points that potentially qualify or disqualify cases. By taking the time to look at the data on the front end, we’re able to provide firms with intelligence that allows them to make better decisions on case management and expenditures.”
Class action and complex litigation: scale, efficiency, and results
Regulatory changes such as British Columbia moving to a no-fault system and Ontario’s amendments to the Class Proceedings Act have pushed many Canadian personal injury firms to diversify revenue streams by creating or expanding class action and mass tort business lines. As this becomes more prevalent, there’s an increasing need for law firms to take advantage of modern technologies to scale effectively.
Medchart is focused on developing technologies for onboarding that cleanse the data, engage the claimants, and organize necessary documentation on the front end, which is then pre-cued up into the Medchart portal “to start requesting records and services on Day 1 instead of Day 90 or Day 180,” says Spiceland.
“Basically we’re taking the industry’s archaic processes and automating them with modern-day solutions – we’re looking toward the future, and bringing mass torts along with us.”
Medchart is also building out key connections with other systems that class actions and mass tort firms use across the workflow, including practice management systems, billing software, and eDiscovery platforms. The goal is one ecosystem where all applications play well with one another, Ablack says.
Share
Share
Copyright © 2022 Key Media
Advertise
About us
Contact us
Privacy
Terms of Use
Submit your move
Canadian Lawyer subscription
Canadian Lawyer InHouse subscription
Newsletter
Digital editions
Authors
External contributors
Editorial board
RSS
Law Times
Canadian Law List
Lexpert® Rising Stars
Canadian Law Awards
Subscribe
InHouse
Resources
Events
Rankings
Practice Areas
News
Copyright © 2022 Key Media
Advertise
About us
Contact us
Privacy
Terms of Use
Submit your move
Canadian Lawyer subscription
Canadian Lawyer InHouse subscription
Newsletter
Digital editions
Authors
External contributors
Editorial board
RSS
News
Practice Areas
Rankings
Events
Inhouse
Resources
Subscribe
Copyright © 2022 Key Media
Advertise
About us
Contact us
Privacy
Terms of Use
Submit your move
Canadian Lawyer subscription
Canadian Lawyer InHouse subscription
Newsletter
Digital editions
Authors
External contributors
Editorial board
RSS
News
Practice Areas
Rankings
Events
Inhouse
Resources
Subscribe
in summarization time over manual review
Average 60% reduction
improvement in docket quality
75%
claimant qualification in class action suits
65%+
“Basically we’re taking the industry’s archaic processes and automating them with modern-day solutions – we’re looking toward the future, and bringing mass torts along with us”
Damon Spiceland,
Medchart
Summary Date: January 1, 2022
Gender: Female
DOB: April 23, 1956
Pages Analyzed: 843
Case Highlights:
Treatment Plan
Demographic Information
Medications
Pain symptoms
Accidents
Billing Information
Encounter Chronology
All medical records at the hospital
Open Summary
Workflow process automation, reliance on digital data sources for medical and other records, and AI/ML review capabilities are gaining traction rapidly because they cut down on lengthy processes that require a significant number of hours to complete, such as claimant qualification, which can potentially run into the thousands. At this stage, adoption of technology is no longer a differentiator in the class action and mass tort space – it’s increasingly table stakes.
“It’s imperative to have frictionless integration to enable efficient service delivery – when dealing with the complexity and scale of multi-plaintiff litigation, data has to flow like water.”
Looking ahead
The emerging trend is clear: to be successful in the coming years, personal injury law firms must adapt their service delivery models and technology approach to meet the changing landscape of the practice. Through AL/NLP partnerships and data innovation, Medchart is bringing its expertise and cutting-edge solutions to personal injury law firms to deliver medical data insights and expedited claimant qualification at scale. Ultimately, Medchart aims to revolutionize the space.
“It’s an exciting time for Medchart, and for personal injury firms,” says Ablack. “And this is really just the beginning.”
Medchart is focused on developing technologies for onboarding that cleanse the data, engage the claimants, and organize necessary documentation on the front end, which is then pre-cued up into the Medchart portal “to start requesting records and services on Day 1 instead of Day 90 or Day 180,” says Spiceland.
“Basically we’re taking the industry’s archaic processes and automating them with modern-day solutions – we’re looking toward the future, and bringing mass torts along with us.”
Medchart is also building out key connections with other systems that class actions and mass tort firms use across the workflow, including practice management systems, billing software, and eDiscovery platforms. The goal is one ecosystem where all applications play well with one another, Ablack says.
“The legal industry is making huge decisions based on data-driven intelligence,” Spiceland says. “By utilizing docket protection, we’re able to take a peek within the data universe and find common data points that potentially qualify or disqualify cases. By taking the time to look at the data on the front end, we’re able to provide firms with intelligence that allows them to make better decisions on case management and expenditures.”
Class action and complex litigation: scale, efficiency, and results
Regulatory changes such as British Columbia moving to a no-fault system and Ontario’s amendments to the Class Proceedings Act have pushed many Canadian personal injury firms to diversify revenue streams by creating or expanding class action and mass tort business lines. As this becomes more prevalent, there’s an increasing need for law firms to take advantage of modern technologies to scale effectively.
client’s conditions, impairments, medications, and drug devices, and Medchart is currently chasing new data to expand its reach.
Currently, Medchart counts over 100M+ patients and thousands of providers, including hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies across North America, that it has linked via direct digital connections to electronic health information networks and individual institutions.
Beyond plugging into new connections, Medchart is also repurposing data for use in specific, scalpel-like ways. Existing data sources can contribute to value-added work around mass torts, as reflected by Medchart’s success at medical data retrieval and record review for the Purdue opioid docket. In Purdue, Medchart identified patterns of use to help qualify more claimants (who could show they had been prescribed Purdue drugs, in this case) and bump others into higher compensation tiers (those who could show they were prescribed the drug for more than six months).
Medchart looks at data differently, says Damon Spiceland, Head of Mass Tort Operations. Understanding that bad data at the input stage negatively affects throughput and output, Medchart differentiated itself in Purdue using data hygiene, which allowed matching of PII data to correct bad data. This, accompanied by access to historical databases such as pharmacy data, provided unique data that was otherwise unrecoverable in many cases. This allowed Medchart to pull nationwide historical data across all big-box pharmacies and expedite an archaic process, reducing cost and inefficiencies. The goal is to bring to Canadian firms those same capabilities to drive business benefit and inform case strategy.
streamlining the medical record and data retrieval process. The Toronto-based company is used by more than 180 Canadian law firms, including leading national and regional personal injury and class-action firms, and “to date, we’ve been at the leading edge of innovation to help firms obtain records and billing data efficiently,” says Anand Ablack, VP, Business Development, Legal.
“For 2022, we’re broadening our capabilities in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, expanding our digital data connections, and focusing on helping Canadian firms take on larger, more complex actions like class actions and mass tort.”
New partnership leverages AI, NLP
For injury-based torts, law firm staff routinely review thousands of pages of claimant medical, pharmacy, billing, and other records – a critical but traditionally very manual and labour-intensive process. Medchart’s recently announced partnership with New York-based DigitalOwl, a fellow innovator in the space offering a machine learning platform that interprets medical records, looks to address this common pain point.
After uploading scanned medical records to the platform, DigitalOwl generates a focused medical summary dataset with multiple filtering options and easy-to-use navigation. It puts the most relevant data at the user’s fingertips in a fraction of the usual time, aligning with Medchart’s vision of leveraging technology such as AI and NLP to streamline work for the personal injury bar.
THE RECENT Wolters Kluwer Future Ready Lawyer Survey found that over three-quarters of lawyers believe technology will have the most significant impact on their business over the next three years, but only 33% say they’re ready for this change or are able to move forward with tech adoption. For personal injury lawyers and law firms specifically, this challenge is even more acute, as most don’t have the luxury of innovation departments or large IT teams and instead rely on turnkey technology solutions to drive business efficiency and service delivery gains.
Medchart has established itself as a key partner for