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From Dallas Morning News by Victor Godinez Sept. 13, 2005 |
Dallas start-up grows strong
Tech firm's product may save lives by getting test results to doctors fast
Modern medical technology has outpaced old-fashioned human communications in many hospitals, but a Dallas start-up is helping doctors play catch-up.
ERIN TRIEB/Special Contributor
Brothers Thomas (left) and Peter White co-founded Vocada. The Dallas start-up sells a communications system that sends patient test results to physicians quickly.
Brothers Peter and Thomas White launched Vocada Inc. in 2000 and will have sales of about $1.5 million this year, and probably triple that amount in 2006.
For hospitals, the payoff may be even more dramatic: fewer patient deaths and fewer lawsuits.
"We think the market is around $200 million, maybe $300 million," said Thomas White, executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Peter White is chief executive of the 10-person firm, which sells a communications system that ensures that patient test results get to the referring physician as quickly as possible.
Vocada, which is profitable, sells its systems to medium and large hospitals around the country, including local facilities such as Baylor University Medical Center, Parkland Health & Hospital System and Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas.
Dr. Samuel Cade, a radiologist at Baylor, said Vocada's alert system has cut the average time it takes to notify a referring physician of a critical X-ray or MRI down to three or four minutes.
What's more, Vocada's technology lets the radiologist know if the referring physician has received the message, something that has not been the case at Baylor or other hospitals.
"Those are where the lawsuits come from," Dr. Cade said.
Vocada's software is essentially an extremely persistent voice mail system.
In a demonstration, Dr. Cade picked up his phone, punched in a code, and left a message for another physician about some images of one of his patients.
The message was beamed to the physician's cellphone, his beeper was paged, and a fax spit out in his office.
The physicians in the system can elect to receive the message alert in any way they choose, including e-mail.
Once a physician has been notified that a message is waiting, he can dial into the system, enter his code and listen to the original message.
Within a couple minutes, Dr. Cade was able to log on to a password-protected Vocada Web site and see that the message had been received.
Dr. Cade was also able to play back on his computer a digital recording of his original message.
Additional alerts
If the recipient does not retrieve the message, additional alerts are issued, and other workers, such as nurses, are also notified.
The system can also handle emergency messages differently from important but not critical messages.
For example, nonurgent messages do not get sent to physicians between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m.
Improving communications inside hospitals and other health care organizations can save lives, said Dr. Richard Croteau, executive director for patient safety initiatives at the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
Communication
"Yes, communication is a big issue in hospitals (and all health care organizations)," he said in an e-mail interview.
"In relation to patient safety, it is the biggest."
"In our database of over 3,000 sentinel events (deaths and major disability resulting from care) and their root cause analyses, the most frequently cited causative factor – over two-thirds of the cases – is ineffective communication," he said.
Earlier this year, the commission added to its list of national patient safety goals that organizations should measure and, if necessary, improve the speed at which laboratory results are given to the patient's caregiver.
"We ask the organization to measure its reporting times for critical tests and critical results, assess those data against their own expectations for appropriate turn-around/reporting times, and then, based on the results of the assessments, take action to improve reporting times, as appropriate," Dr. Croteau said.
While the commission doesn't endorse any particular products or companies, Peter White said Vocada's system addresses the concerns about communications.
Demand for Vocada's system has grown so fast that it hasn't had to resort to outside financing, as many other young firms do.
"We're past the threshold of needing funding," said Mr. White.
E-mail vgodinez@dallasnews.com