Jinesh Patel (CEO and Co-founder, UptimeHealth)

Can you explain your job to a five-year-old? 

I help doctors and their teams take care of the equipment they use in their offices so they can focus on taking care of their patients, like you and me. I give them a software tool that tells them what they own and what they have to do based on what they own. And, if something breaks down we can help them fix the device or find someone to help them fix it.

What excites you most about your job?

I genuinely appreciate being on the front edge of outpatient equipment management. At this moment, there are not many other companies like mine, so we don’t have to follow a certain rule book or pathway to demonstrate success. That ability to innovate without preconceived ideas or thoughts of what we are “supposed to do” to achieve our goals and growth is quite exciting. I am just always learning, experimenting, and tweaking every aspect of our business. 

Also, we are a first market mover for our type of product. This means we are the first ones educating other stakeholders in the industry as to what we do and why we do it. Every time I see a client, partner, or colleague get that “aha” moment once they realize the importance of UptimeHealth and why we are building what we are building, it helps fuel my sense of purpose and makes me want to drive.

Which trend will change the future of medicine? 

Our new and energized hunger for data and access to data that surrounds the practice and delivery of healthcare. With more and better data, we will begin to see the evolution of more sophisticated AI, AR, and VR tools that will change the entire healthcare industry. Everything from how we train future doctors and learn about procedures and medication as patients to how we deliver care will fundamentally shift us away from the inefficient care models that bog down our systems today. AI, AR, and VR products will improve access to care, reduce the cost of care delivery, increase our ability to provide education in real time to those who need it and enable a more patient-centric focus approach.

Looking back, which trends have you missed or underestimated? 

I did not expect the DIY-type companies to take off the way they did and underestimated the demand and growth in that sector. I was pleasantly surprised to see it, but I was a skeptic. I wasn’t sure how many people would feel safe or happy to do a “medical procedure” themselves and trust the results. I thought there would be more apprehension and a slower adoption curve to people trusting a touchless healthcare experience and not having a trained professional making sure you were performing the steps correctly.

It was easy to see that my hypothesis was wrong when companies offering DNA tests, cheek swabs, finger pricks, dental impressions, etc., began taking off and everyone was doing it. The power of convenience and the simplicity of the offerings were so strong, that it completely outweighed any fear of potentially doing it wrong or messing something up for patients. And now it is such common practice that the government provided in-home testing kits as part of COVID response initiatives.

Which MedTech initiative or startup deserves more attention? 

Not because we focus on it, but because I honestly believe that companies innovating in the equipment management space deserve more attention. There is a reason we don’t have a lot of competition, and it has nothing to do with the market size or the demand for a product like UptimeHealth. It’s because not enough people talk about the importance of it, and shift our care delivery model to being more outpatient and in-home centric.

Healthcare is a combination of a patient, a provider, and an instrument. Hardly any healthcare is provided without the use of a tool or device of some kind. If the device you need to care for a patient is not working, you are not providing care to that patient or generating revenue for that procedure. However, almost all innovations and investments we see in Health IT related to operational efficiencies are centered around patient and provider workflows. There is not enough attention being paid to solutions that protect and improve the workflows related to the third variable. When we move care into our communities and homes, it means the equipment that is used for care also has to make the same journey. The further you get away from the health system where you have engineers and technicians on staff who are dedicated to equipment management, the less people understand their devices and the proper management that is required of them to operate at optimal performance. We need more solutions that help manage the learning curve to reduce any unplanned downtime and ensure the quality of equipment output.

Where would you put a million dollars? 

Outside of continuing to invest in UptimeHealth, I would look to invest in healthcare data companies. I would focus on companies that work with patient or healthcare operation workflow data. Whether they focus on collection, processing analysis, visualization reporting, or security layers, it doesn’t matter. As long as the data is linked to an expensive problem and they are working with clean and trustworthy data, they should be able to produce a valuable product.

What's the best advice you've ever received? 

If you truly believe in your idea and deeply understand its purpose and value, you will succeed. You may just not know how yet.