Our blog has been quiet, so my first resolution for 2017 is: “Get writing!” To fulfill my promise, I thought that I would start off the New Year talking about our big news from last fall – namely, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of HCA.

Many customers and partners are curious about the impact this will have on our product and our ability to support them. As Mobile Heartbeat grew and more hospitals adopted our Clinical Communications and Collaboration (CC&C) platform, we knew that we needed to find a significant partner to help us with having real resources and vision. We looked hard at the three potential partner types that might be a great home for the company:

  • Financial
  • Technology
  • Clinical

The first and most obvious partner choice was a significant financial firm, perhaps a Private Equity (PE) fund, in order to get the financial clout that Mobile Heartbeat required. However, a large influx of PE cash comes with many strings attached. The management of our company would have to be very near-term focused and the financial goals of the company would have to come first – well before additional clinical product development. The CC&C market is just getting started and we at Mobile Heartbeat still have some cool product ideas to bring to market. Thus, a financial partner was too restrictive.

Next up for consideration was a technology partner similar in focus to Mobile Heartbeat. It seemed to make sense that we should become a part of a larger technology company. As discussions moved forward, the goal of taking Mobile Heartbeat’s CC&C software and “including” it within a larger product offering became the preferred path. It wasn’t until we sat down and thought through the implications, i.e. our CC&C software would become an exclusive component of another platform, that we realized the riskiness of this option. Although our software would find a good home, what about our current customers who selected a product that is competitive to one of our suitors? If the deal closed, then their investment in deploying Mobile Heartbeat’s software would have to be “undone.” These customers would not be happy and neither would we.

Finally, a clinical option appeared and the more we considered this option, the better it looked. A clinical buyer who knew us well and had deployed Mobile Heartbeat would understand our needs. They would embrace the future of our technology and, more importantly, encourage other outstanding clinical organizations to work with us to make our product even better. The result would be software that would be attuned to the clinical needs of similar hospitals and continually advance as the “Platinum Standard” for CC&C.

So, one of our large customers had what I refer to as a Victor Kiam moment and we now have the resources (both capital and human), along with the clinical thinking needed, to make Mobile Heartbeat even stronger.

From “small but mighty” last year, we are making the transition to “just plain mighty.” We invite you to join in the fun.