Who Owns Quicken Medical Expense Manager

UserDavidC

Recently an idea post was closed (https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7900552) with a comment by a Quicken employee:

Thank you all for your interest in Quicken Medical Expense Manager; there are no current plans to revive this program. This may be reevaluated at a later date, but for now, this thread will be closed.

The comment implies that the Quicken Medical Expense Manager (QMEM) is now owned by Quicken, Inc. That is when Quicken, Inc. was spun off from Intuit, Inc., QMEM was also transferred to Quicken, Inc.

For my benefit, can you confirm that Quicken, Inc. now owns QMEM and Intuit, Inc. has nothing to do with QMEM?

Thanks.

jacobs

@UserDavidC I don't think it was ever made public whether the code for Medical Expense Manager was part of Intuit's sell-off of Quicken to H.I.G. Capital in 2016. Since the program had been discontinued prior to that date, my guess would be that the rights to the code remained with Intuit. But the only people who would know would be those who had access to the sale/spin-off agreements — which is no one here.

I'm curious: why do you have interest in whether it is Intuit or Quicken, Inc. which owns the code? Since the program was off the market prior to the sale, and support for it was discontinued long ago, why would it matter to anyone? 

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Chris_QPW

To me the question of who "owns it" is irrelevant. It is a dead product that neither company intends to modernize or support.

Mark1104

@jacobs
 
it would matter if for some crazy reason someone wanted to buy the code from its owner and market it 

Jon

That program's almost 20 years old. I can't imagine the source code would be worth much at this point; the rights to the Quicken name would probably be worth more. Still, I don't think this product is any more viable now than it was then. I don't need a separate program to track medical expenses outside Quicken, and my medical history fits nicely in a small ASCII text file.

Chris_QPW

My medical history fits nicely on my heath provider's website.  

jl747

If you are looking for a Medical Record software here is a link to one.

https://fhcmsoftware.com/

I do not nor have I used it.

They do have a Trial version.

NotACPA

I just took a look at the website that @jl747 referenced.  The manual is from 2019 and there's a reference to an  October 2019 Beta.

In short, it's not apparent that FHCM is much more alive than QMEM

GeoffG

If you are seriously looking into a viable medical records app and happen to own an iPhone, you should consider linking your medical records to the Health app. This contains all medical records you import from all your healthcare provider records and lab reports and numerous other metrics. This is and will continue to run rings around any 20 year old app.

I realize that it is not expense specific, but as has been pointed out previously, that data is readily available online at your provider.

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Rocket J Squirrel

GeoffG said:

If you are seriously looking into a viable medical records app and happen to own an iPhone, you should consider linking your medical records to the Health app.

What is your level of privacy concern with this setup? It appears to allow a non-HIPAA-compliant app access to your otherwise HIPAA-protected data. I have filled in my manual data, but am on the fence about linking to my medical provider.

GeoffG

Rocket J Squirrel said:

What is your level of privacy concern with this setup? It appears to allow a non-HIPAA-compliant app access to your otherwise HIPAA-protected data. I have filled in my manual data, but am on the fence about linking to my medical provider.

I cannot speak to non-HIPAA compliant access, but for my use case, I'm moving from one network provider to another in the near future and having access to my own medical history years down the road is vital. Establishing the API is limited to specific healthcare providers so there is that and the data is no more vulnerable than the host sights. 

jl747

Now a days there are Hospitals and Physicians that belong in a group (associated with a Hospital) are using a software that's called MyChart.

They have an app and you can access your medical info within this service. But your medical professionals needs to be using their

software.

There are others out there that is similar to MyChart.

UserDavidC

@jacobs I initially thought that the rights to QMEM would be with Intuit, Inc. but the comment referred to above seems to say that Quicken, Inc. now has the rights. I just want confirmation.

As to why -- again the comment indicates that they may revisit QMEM in the future, so do we ask Intuit, Inc. or Quicken, Inc.?

@Chris_QPW I agree. I think it unlikely that QMEM will be resurrected in the future, but you never know. Someone my but the rights to the program.

@Jon I think someone might want the code to create a way to import QMEM data into their own program. I believe that at this time, QMEM can't be imported into any other program.

@Jon & @Chris_QPW For me, neither of your solutions are a good fit. The detail in QMEM gives me a better insight than a spreadsheet and although my health providers are web-based, they are not connected (that is each provided has their own system) and these systems provide health data not payment/insurance data. QMEM put all this together in one place.

Bottom Line:

Do I realistically expect Quicken, Inc. to offer QMEM in the future? No I don't but their comment on the closed idea did not rule this out and I just want clarification as to the ownership of QMEM as it would be pointless to connect Intuit, Inc. if Quicken, Inc. owned the software or vice versa.

jacobs

@UserDavidC Thanks for explaining your interest in this. 

I don't think the statement in the closed thread here can be used to infer that Quicken Inc. owns the code and marketing rights to the old software. In fact, whatever moderator posted it probably has no idea; they were just told there are no plans to revive this former product. The last line is just a general "never say never" comment.

It's hard for me to envision a scenario where they would revive this product, as they'd likely need to either re-code it from scratch, or make significant enhancements to it. It's Windows-only technology from an era when Macs were marginal, so they'd likely need a Mac version, too. Or since the direction is to fewer desktop repositories of data and having information available in the cloud, perhaps reinvent it as a cloud-based product. But this program also predated widespread medical electronic records, cell phones, and digital watches and the accompanying health records applications like Apple's Health app, Google Fit, Fitbit, and many other more niche health trackers. Now, those applications don't do what QMEM did and visa versa, but they surely show the direction of health records management. I think recreating/refreshing something like QMEM in the era of these tracking/data repository apps from much bigger companies would serve a very tiny niche market. And those apps are free, as are health portals from medical providers, where QMEM would need to be sold for enough to justify the development and support efforts. 

Back to the issue of who owns the code and marketing rights to QMEM, I'll restate that only people who were privy to the legal agreements between Intuit, Quicken and H.I.G. could answer the question. Since none of the details of the sale ever became public — heck, we don't even know what H.I.G. paid Intuit for Quicken — I think it's unlikely anyone outside a few principals and lawyers know the answer about QMEM, and it's highly unlikely they'll be commenting here.  

If your interest is trying to lobby the owner of the code to revive it or release it into the public domain, I'd say you should try a letter to Quicken's Office of the President. Quicken is much smaller than Intuit, so your chances of a meaningful reply are somewhat better. If you get a reply, I suspect it will be of the same "no current plans to revive" variety, but perhaps they will answer your question of whether Quicken Inc. actually owns/has the rights to the code.