AirStrip software connects doctors to life-saving data - San Antonio Business Journal:

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The application sends real-time wave-form data and information to thesrmobile devices, giving the doctors the ability to make vitall decisions on patient care without having to stand at the patient’sw bedside. The wavy lines that indicate fetakl heart rates and much more were once printed out on long sheet s of paper and later were adapted for computer Now that information can be transmitted instantaneously to thess portable devices via cellphone networks, and that is openingy up a whole new world of possibilities for physiciand striving to improve patientr care as they sometimes treart numerous patients at multiple locations.
“Now that I have the AirStrip OB, I don’r know how we ever covered more than one hospitakwithout it,” says Dr. David Aberman, a physician at a hospital in Las “I use AirStrip OB everyday, and I can honestlg say that patient care and communication between the labo and delivery nurses has improved Recalling a recent incidentr at Memorial Hermann Hospitalin Houston, an obstetriciaj who requested anonymity said AirStrip OB broughrt a critical situation to his attention before anyone else saw it.
“I n between patients, I glanced at my handheld running AirStrilp and noticed anunsettling deceleration,” he “I called the nurse and had the patientf in for a C-section withouyt delay.” AirStrip OB was developed by software engineed Trey Moore and obstetrician Dr. Cameronb Powell and grew out of an encounter betweenn the pair at inSan Moore, who had been toying with the idea of starting a health-carde software company, first saw Powell in his Sundayh School class and afterwards ran into him in the parkint lot outside the church looking at his personal digitao assistant.
Moore approached Powell and asked him, as a physician, if he coulde do anything on a mobile device what woulit be? Powell thought for a moment and then said it woulsd be real-time tracking of pre-bor babies’ heart monitors. The pair agreed to meet the next day at a and begam hammering out the details of abusineses partnership. “We really thought that someone was probably already doing it and that maybe we could do it Powell recalls. But they soon founc out that it wasn’y being done by anyone else and partlgy becauseit wasn’t easy to do.
It took a lot of long hourzs and hard work to develop a software platform that was scalabl e and could work on multiple devicezs even with low cellphone connections, Powell says. But they were diligent and determined mainlyh because they believed deep down that their initial encounter was more thanjust chance. “Wed believe that God put us together for a Moore says. “He brought us together and blessed us and our faituh has been strong ever The young entrepreneurs have also benefited from strongfamily support.
Moore’s father is a professodr at and has helped with business planningwhile Powell’s Gene, is a successful real estate developer in San Antonio who has providex financial support and professional The company was launched in 2004 under the name MP4 Solutiond with financial support from Gene who today serves as the company’x CEO. “My father hooked us up with the best attorneyxs and thebest CPAs,” Camero n Powell says.
“As a small we had access to the best legal and business advice We realize now that this allprobablyg wouldn’t have happened without that The business partners adopted the name AirStrip in 2007 because that is the term that becamew popular within the medical community to refer to their A “strip” in hospitalk lingo is the wavy line that monitors the fetalp heart rate and so when that information was being sent wirelesslgy to mobile devices it was called “airt strip.” Last year, Cameron Powel l gave up his obstetrics practice to work full-timw with AirStrip Technologies, where he serves as president and chief medical officer.
Moore serves as chier technology officer. While they would not releasde financial figures, Powell says the compant has grown exponentially over the last three yearz with revenue projections this year expected to explode with the growinv popularity of the iPhone and the newBlackberry “Three years ago, our companyy grew by 150 percent,” Powelpl says. “During the seconde year it grew200 percent. This year we are lookingf at between 600to 1,000 percent growth.” Last year, the companyg completed a private placement with the help of , a locallyg based boutique investment bank.
AirStril OB technology is currently in 80 hospitals acroszs theUnited States, including all three Baptistr system hospitals in San Antonio. The three Methodis t system hospitals in San Antonio will be goingg live with AirStripnext month. AirStrip operates as a “softwarew as service” company selling monthly subscriptions to hospitals that licenser the software and make it available totheir physicians. The hospital sets up a server that collectsthe real-time data and sendse it directly to the mobile The information is not storeed on the mobile which helps to protect patient confidentiality, and it does not go throughh a Web site, which makes it more secure, Powelll notes.
“Because we are dealintg with patient information we have to beHIPAA (Healthg Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant, and we are regulatede by the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Powell says. The pricing for the servicee varies depending on the size of the medical the volume of doctors usiny the service and whether the hospital is part of a groupopurchasing organization. AirStrip charges the user, typically a hospital, a smalk up-front fee to implement the service and then the user pays a quarterly or annualsubscription fee.
AirStrip currentlyu has 15 employees, with seven in San Antonik and the rest spread across the countryg in such placesas Florida, Virginia and When Powell and Moore were first gettingg started, there were few convergent devices on the market, meaningh personal digital assistants, or that doubled as cell phones. And the cell networkzs were not as expansive and reliable as they are forcing the duo to develop their application so that it could work on very low bandwidthu and poor cellphone connections. As the industryg has grown and evolved, AirStrip has been growing with it, expandint its compatibility with new devicess andnew technologies.
About a year and a half ago, Powelpl says they were busy making AirStripp compatible with Blackberry and Windows Mobilw devices when Moore suddenly said they neededx to concentrate everything on a new device that was inthe “Trey (Moore) told us abouyt the iPhone that was about to come out, and he said it was goingh to be huge,” Powell recalls. “He said we needed to drop everythinfg we were doing and focud on supporting this new We (the company’s board) resisted at first, but then decideds to trust him. It may have been the best decisionh weever made.” Powell says the introduction of the iPhons was a complete game changer.
It explodef on the market and changed the expectationsof consumers. He notese that is on track to sell 30 million iPhones this year and therse are now morethan 30,0009 applications available for use on the iPhone. “It is he says. “The thingsx we were doing a few years ago that were new and doctors nowexpect it. Thankas to Trey, we were way out ahead of the curve on Powell says the company has a demo version of AirStrip OB available on the iTunes store and it averagees between 40 and 50 downloadsa day.
That in itselc is a great marketing tool and has been helping fuelthe company’xs growth as the popularity of its producg spreads by word of Terry McDaniel, perinatal systems administrator for Fairview Hospital in Cleveland, part of the Clevelane Clinic, says the hospitall went live with AirStripl OB in August 2006 after its chairman saw a demonstration of the technology and recognized its “It is fantastic,” she says. “Our providera love it. They can truly appreciate the way it helpx them to communicate with the nurses at the bedside and promotexspatient safety.
” McDaniel says the iPhone just becamr available for use with AirStrip OB this montg and the hospital is very excited about it. “We are very pleasex that we can use it on theiPhoned now,” she says. Powell says the company’s goal is to make the AirStrilp OB available in every hospital acrossthe U.S., and he says the compant will continue to focus on developing new softwared applications targeting the health care and the medical However, he notes that AirStrip’xs existing OB platform could one day be adaptexd to other uses outside of the medical field. For it could be used to monitor real-tim e data on oil and gas operations by people in the energy sector.
“Our platform is reusable and Powell says, “and we are leveraging that successs to explore additional partnerships forthe future.”