Wait times, especially in the NY tri-state area can be rough. You never know how much time to put aside. Whether you need to call a babysitter, or call someone to pick up your children it could be stressful not knowing how long you’ll be in a hospital for. You check your phone for notifications about nearly everything in your life, so why should hospital wait times be any different? Well with MedTimers it is. The app that lets you know how long your wait time is has arrived and is making life a little less stressful.
Today, Yasir Ali takes us through the details of his new company and why this is big for healthcare.
Tell us about the product or service.
Founded at NYU’s $200K Entrepreneurs Challenge, MedTimers is an easy to implement web-based patient flow management solution that allows medical facilities to collaboratively track, manage and analyze patient flow while simultaneously calculating and publishing real-time wait times, so patients know before they go. MedTimers, using all the collected data points, creates in–depth analytics; reports are generated for improvement to reduce costs and wastes by identifying bottlenecks, trends, certain occurrences, rethinking handoffs, anticipating peak-hours, and allocating resources and adjusting staffing. These analytics will allow healthcare facilities to boost their operational efficiency and improve patient care. MedTimers is now working towards integrating with EMR platforms to automate analytics and integrate our patient flow management solution.
How is it different?
MedTimers differentiates itself not only on cost, ease of use, same day implementation, HIPAA concerns, automated in-depth analytics, but also on being the only patient flow solution with publishing of real-time wait times through a variety of media. These wait times can be published across text messaging, website widget and city billboard.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
MedTimers is tackling two markets: the patient flow management solution market and the healthcare analytics market. The market for ‘patient flow management solutions’ was worth an estimated $251 million in 2014 and is expected to grow by a CAGR of 22% to $678.4 million by 2019, according to a report by MarketsAndMarkets. The other market MedTimers is categorized into is the healthcare analytics market; the global healthcare analytics market is expected to reach $18.7 Billion by 2020 from $5.8 Billion in 2015, at a CAGR of 26.5% during the forecast period.
There’s currently not much competitor risk as Quirk Healthcare Solutions reports: “right now, this useful technology has a 5% utilization rate.”
What is the business model?
MedTimers is a subscription-based platform, like most other patient management solutions. The pricing is fixed for each type of a medical facility and it is affected by the size of the facility, patient volume and length of contract. We also offer a month free of charge (trial).
What inspired the business?
When the NYU $200K Entrepreneur Challenge had started, a friend of mine by the name of Mohammed Mona and I brainstormed about an application that would share emergency room wait times. Our theory was as such: by sharing all ER real-time wait times, it would allow for an equal distribution of patients throughout ERs. If there were an influx of patients in one facility, patients would then utilize a facility with a shorter wait time—eventually normalizing patient flow in all facilities to reduce wait times. As months progressed we realized that there had to be an incentive behind getting a healthcare facility to share its wait times, so we created a patient flow management solution with integrated real-time wait times. As we help hospitals improve operations, we automate real-time wait time publishing.
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
In the next six months, we plan to launch into 15 more healthcare facilities; five of which we aim to have in New York City. We also plan to integrate with high enterprise EMRs, starting with AllScripts.
If you could be put in touch with one investor in the New York community who would it be and why?
One investor entity that I would really love to get in touch with would be Micah Rosenbloom. Micah is an angel investor that also focuses in healthcare startups, he was a mentor at a healthcare accelerator called BluePrint Health, and doesn’t have an investment in an healthcare IT startup yet.
Why did you launch in New York?
The issue of lengthy healthcare wait times is well associated with the tri-state area. With urgent care centers booming around the city as well; I thought it would open doors for a wide spectrum of customers, for ERs to cut wait times and urgent care centers to publish real-time wait times.
Where is your favorite place to visit in the area in the fall?
In the fall, my favorite area to visit is Washington Square Park, by NYU. It’s an amazing place to do work and very nice spot to lay back and soak in the fall wind.
