Nationality American Name Steven Hacker | Role Author | |
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Occupation Medical writer
Dermatologist Alma mater University of Florida
University of Michigan Books The Medical Entrepreneur Digital Version: Pearls, Pitfalls and Practical Business Advice for Doctors Education University of Michigan, University of Florida | ||
Steven M. Hacker is the author of The Medical Entrepreneur: Pearls, Pitfalls and Practical Business Advice for Doctors, creator of the Medical Entrepreneur App and the course director of a symposium based on the book. He is also the founder of SkinStore.com and PassportMD.
Contents
Early career
Hacker earned his medical degree from the University of Florida in 1989. He completed two years of Internal Medicine residency at the University of Michigan in 1991, and completed a three-year dermatology residency at the University of Florida in 1994.
He started a private dermatology practice in Boca Raton, Florida, in 1994. In 2011, he started a second cosmetic dermatology practice, at Spa Anjali in Avon, Colorado.
SkinStore.com
In 1996, Hacker founded SkinStore.com , an online retailer selling specialized skin care and beauty products. In 2001, Salu acquired Dermdex, SkinStore.com’s parent company. At the tail end of 2009, Drugstore.com acquired SkinStore.com through its purchase of Salu in a $36 million half-stock, half-cash transaction. Through its 2011 acquisition of Drugstore.com, Walgreens acquired SkinStore.com, in a $429 million deal. CBS News called the move “wise,” allowing Walgreens to grow without adding more physical stores. Walgreens continues to operate SkinStore.com as a standalone business.
PassportMD
Hacker launched PassportMD]in 2005, and served as CEO until 2009. The personal health record (PHR) service collects and keeps a secure, HIPAA-compliant online database of the medical histories of adult patients, accessible by the patient and the patient’s designated physicians. Th When it began, the data was stored on CD-ROMs and given to patients, but it is now entirely online.
In a 2009 pilot program in Arizona and Utah, PassportMD was one of four services chosen by Medicare to be made available as a PHR vendor, in order to determine the effectiveness of PHRs for senior citizens.
Passport MD was acquired by MediConnect Globa] at the end of 2009, and its headquarters were moved from Florida to Utah, where MediConnect is based. In 2012, MediConnect was purchased by Verisk Analytics for $348.6 million.
AppForMyPatients
In October 2014, Hacker's company Nano 2.0 launched AppForMyPatients, an e-commerce platform selling products sold at the offices of dermatologists and cosmetic surgeons. It provides patients with a free mobile app and physicians with a software as a service platform to program and launch the app.
Book
In 2010, Hacker wrote The Medical Entrepreneur: Pearls, Pitfalls and Practical Business Advice for Doctors. Based on Hacker’s own experiences with start-ups and in practice management, The text also includes contributions from attorneys offering expert opinion sections.
As of January 2017, the Kindle edition of The Medical Entrepreneur ranks in the top 10 of Amazon Best Sellers in Practice Management & Reimbursement.
Symposium
In 2012, Hacker started The Medical Entrepreneur Symposium, an annual three-day gathering in Florida, featuring professional speakers expanding on topics covered in Hacker’s book of the same name.
Other work
In 2016, Hacker published his first novel, The Caduceus and the Swastika, in the historical fiction genre, following three medical students struggling against the Third Reich. It was an Editors' Choice by the Historical Novel Society.