The healthcare-IT industry came in for a bruising yesterday with medical transaction switch company, HealthBridge, accusing rival Digital Healthcare Solutions (DHS) of anti-competitive practices.
HealthBridge CEO Gerrie van Zyl said yesterday the company was considering taking legal action against DHS for denying doctors access to the HealthBridge servers over the Internet.
DHS, the result of a merger between MediSwitch and QEDI, has responded by saying that it had blocked access to the HealthBridge servers, but that it had done nothing illegal because it sponsored their clients` Internet access as part of their offering.
The problem stems from the fact that most clients subscribed to the DHS services use the QEDI network, a network sponsored by DHS, to access the Internet. DHS CEO Hennie du Plessis says that the company is simply trying to prevent what he calls "rogue traffic" from being passed over its network. "We are paying for the ride," he says, "so all we are asking is that those that ride with us be our customers."
Van Zyl, however, sees the situation very differently and says that the move by DHS is an attempt to block the entry of innovative and new products into the market.
"DHS`s actions unquestionably amount to the deliberate abuse of their dominant position in order to sabotage the industry in a way that we believe the Competition Act clearly prohibits," said van Zyl yesterday.
HealthBridge has also accused DHS of tampering with HealthBridge files on client machines, an accusation that du Plessis denies. Du Plessis says that most of the rogue traffic appears to be originating from sites that only have DHS`s Qcom software installed, suggesting that the files are being tampered with before being sent to the HealthBridge servers.
Van Zyl said that up until last week, when doctors were cut off without warning from the HealthBridge servers, clients had been using the network for all their transactions. He said that according to the provisos of the Competition Commission`s approval, DHS was obliged to allow clients using the DHS-controlled Practice Management Application software unhindered access to trading partners of their choice, a stipulation Van Zyl believes DHS is infringing.
Du Plessis says that HealthBridge had applied to DHS for access to its services earlier this year but negotiations over terms and conditions had failed to reach a conclusion.
DHS is jointly owned by PQ Africa and the Bytes Technology Group.
Share