As Mobile Heartbeat continues to innovate and transform clinical communication and collaboration, we’re looking to fill open engineering positions with employees who are eager to work on an important product that affects hundreds of thousands of users and their patients. This monthly article series highlights some of the current Mobile Heartbeat employees who exemplify our values and are helping us work toward our goal of improving communication in healthcare.

This month’s interview is with Aadit Shah, a solutions engineer with a passion for touching patient lives.

Can You Tell Me a Little About Your Decision to Get a Job in Engineering?

I decided to become an engineer around my early teenage years, because of movies like The Matrix and Swordfish. I really loved hacking movies and of course, computer games. Those were my early influences. But I never got to see computer science like that in action until I was a little older.

One of my friend’s brothers was studying computer science at the time, and one day he showed me what he was working on. I thought it was so cool, and I could really see myself doing something like that.

Then after high school, I knew I wanted to do computer science and get an engineering job, but I never had the opportunity to try out programming. That summer before college, I was able to take a computer programming course, and that was when I actually knew this was what I wanted to do. Using C/C++ to give commands and to see the computer follow those commands was amazing; it made me want to learn everything there is about computers.

What Made You Want to Work at Mobile Heartbeat?

I was working for a company doing software in the entertainment industry, video on demand. I got laid off from that job and knew I wanted to switch gears.

I was looking for something related to healthcare, something that was a startup and a mobile app. Back then, Mobile Heartbeat was still a startup, so at the time it fit all my criteria. Looking back, I see how fortunate I was to find a company that was everything I wanted, because it doesn’t happen like that very often.

Why Did You Want to Work for a Healthcare Mobile App?

I try to keep myself up to date with what’s going on with the tech world, with iOS, Android, VR and other gadgets. At the time that I was looking for work, healthcare was making huge strides in technology, and still is today.

I wanted to be part of those technological advancements. The company I was at before was in entertainment, so even though the software was reaching a lot of people, I wanted to make a more significant impact. Now I know the software I work on touches peoples’ lives in a much more meaningful way.

I tell people, as an engineer, this is the closest I can get to becoming a doctor. Doctors and nurses are using our app and they’re improving patients’ lives. So even if I’m not treating the patients directly, I’m helping them.

How Would You Describe the Work You Do Here?

I have a masters degree in computer science from Northeastern, so my defined path would have been to work on as a software developer, but in my previous job, I got a taste of working with customers. I loved how different it was, getting to see how the customers were using the product.

Usually, as a developer, you think, “Oh, if I change the code in this way, I can save half a second of processing power,” and you strive for that. But when you talk to the customers, you find out that half second is less important to them. They might be focused on something else, like the UI or the size of a button, so as an engineer that gave me a new perspective. You’re not just thinking about improving the product, you’re looking at how it’s utilized or how it’s impacting the end users.

Now I work as a solutions engineer. I tell people our team is the technical bridge between the customer and MH-CURE. We’re responsible for implementing, maintaining and upgrading both MH-CURE and any new integrations with the existing software that the hospitals are using. Because all the hospitals are configured differently, they might have different IT requirements, different environments, different WiFi setups, everything is different. So our job is to implement MH-CURE in a way that works best in their environment.

For instance, we just launched our new video chat capability. How can we make that capability work in this hospital when they have these existing limitations? Our job is to tailor the software appropriately so the customer can use it in the best way possible.

How Does It Feel to Know Your Work Positively Impacts Patient Care?

First of all, I think patient care is probably the most respected profession in the world. I mean, you are literally touching someone’s life. Knowing that our product makes the care team happier, or at least allows them to provide care in a quicker and easier way, is so much better than anything else I’ve ever worked on.

Also, let me tell you, I visited the NICU at Yale New Haven Hospital, one of our customers. I saw those small babies, and that was a life-changing experience for me. When you can see that there’s new life in this world that you’re trying to make healthier—you don’t know what kind of life they’ll have or the way they’re going to affect the world—and you helped them survive. That’s probably my highest point at Mobile Heartbeat, realizing that I’m able to touch those lives.

How Has Your Experience Here Differed From Other Companies?

To be honest, it makes you think more about your work and how accurately you can do it. If there’s a mistake or a bug or a problem with how you implement the software, if that causes any issues for the hospital, you know it has a huge impact. You know how important it is to fix that kind of thing. You’re always on your toes, looking out for any mistakes, because you know that there are patients’ lives at stake. I don’t think you get that at many other companies.

I recently went to Portsmouth Regional Hospital to shadow clinicians there, and I got to observe an open-heart surgery. I saw the heart surgeon coming in, listening to songs, calm as can be. He didn’t seem at all nervous or worried about the outcome of the surgery.

He does his job so elegantly, so perfectly, but without stressing over it. We know his work is important, and he knows it too, but he’s doing it so calmly and accurately. If there’s a problem in the room, he doesn’t panic anyone else, he just fixes it.

Obviously, this kind of accuracy and confidence comes with experience, but it really helped me look at my job differently. Of course, I’m not a heart surgeon, but with everything I do and how much it impacts the users at these hospitals, I know I can’t be careless. During upgrades, I strive to have the same level of expertise, clarity and calmness as that heart surgeon. I cannot take this as “just my job”—this is important work I’m doing.

How Have You Seen Mobile Heartbeat Evolve, and What Is Your Image of the Future?

When I joined Mobile Heartbeat, we were around 25 people, and in just under three years, we’ve grown to more than three times that size. The growth is good—when I joined, we had no documentation team, so there were no upgrade procedures—now we are more process-driven. I see that as an improvement; since we have more processes and more resources, we can invest more in improving things beyond the product. We’re also hiring engineers since there’s plenty of work to go around.

In terms of our evolution, I think we’re way ahead in our market. I see us as having the best product—I’ve seen our competitors’ products, so I’m not just saying this because I work here—but beyond that, we’re working on implementing the most cutting edge technologies in our platform, and I’m pretty happy with that direction.

To learn more about working at Mobile Heartbeat, visit our careers page, or call 781-238-0000.