Sign up

What matters to you matters to us! Customize your newsletter–tell us what you're most interested in and we'll handle the rest.

loader image

Resources

Blog

SHARE:

March 29, 2017

Qventus: The Startup Making Hospitals Smarter, Safer & More Efficient

stethoscope

Mudit Garg is the co-founder and CEO of Qventus, a leading company that is using AI to transform hospital operations. He has witnessed the biggest challenges at the center of today’s conflicted healthcare system. Hospitals cost the U.S. nearly $1 trillion annually and face rising pressure to balance costs while trying to provide patients with better experiences. It is estimated in the U.S. there is more than $100 billion in inefficiencies that could be saved through more effective use of existing IT systems. Solving these problems requires timely interpretation of data and simple suggestions to affect change in the moment that matters most. Small changes can, over time, boost the speed of healthcare delivery and transform patient outcomes.

In less than three years, Qventus has worked with hospitals across the country to achieve measurable results:

  • Reducing hospital stays for patients by 14%
  • 30% reduction in patients leaving the ER without being seen
  • 20% reduction in the time patients wait to see a doctor
  • 40% reduction in unnecessary testing representing $700K saved by patients

We recently caught up with Mudit to discuss some of the ways which the healthcare industry is changing and what it means to Qventus.

You have a background in engineering. What originally brought you to the world of healthcare?

A decade ago, I was working as a management consultant in a rural hospital in California. It was my first time in a U.S. hospital and I was shocked by daily chaos faced by clinicians.

I had always looked for answers in data but I quickly came to realize that solving this problem wasn’t just about getting data. It was about making the data useful to the frontline teams when all they wanted to do was take care of their patients.

I knew if we did our job well, we’d see a remarkable cost reductions and improved patient outcomes such as shorter wait times and greater overall efficiency. This was my initial introduction to the complicated world of healthcare and it has since been filled with many challenges and even greater rewards.

What are the big takeaways from your early hospital experiences? 

There’s a tremendous amount of data in hospitals and employees on the front lines are drowning in it. We came to understand that many small decisions over timeadd up and are costly both in terms of dollars and cents but also in terms of quality care. That became the core foundation for launching Qventus.

Can you explain how your system helps doctors, patients and hospitals? 

Healthcare organizations are missing a platform that makes their massive amounts of data meaningful. They have systems of record with EMRs; every conceivable piece of information is collected about each patient. They have systems of display which visualize this retrospective data in the form of dashboards, charts and reports. However, up to now, they haven’t had a system of action. That’s what we’ve created.

Our AI-based platform runs in the background, continuously monitoring massive amounts of internal and external data. The platform proactively identifies issues and suggests real-time counter measures to fix them, sending texts and emails to the right individuals to enable them to prevent costly mistakes. We think of these as the 3Ps of decision management for hospital operations: predict, prescribe and persuade.

For example, our system knows that it’s Friday on a long weekend. It also takes into consideration that it’s very cold outside, and we have eight patients who just came in, and we expect four or five more. It shows that Dr. Smith just came online and, in an hour, we will be delayed in collecting lab samples. The system can then send a message directly to the lab manager, or the staff nurse, to bring on extra help so that they can prevent issues with over-capacity. All of this is driven by the systems underlying technologies that combine machine learning with decision science and behavior science. This enables the system to absorb real-time data, learn from the data in the moment, and continuously evaluate different counter measures and decisions throughout the day.

How does Qventus help deliver greater patient outcomes in today’s challenged healthcare system?

We have a healthcare system that, medically speaking, is one of the most advanced in the world. Incredibly smart people work on the front lines, but the persistent feeling is that patients are not getting value for what they pay for in healthcare. What’s more, doctors and highly trained healthcare workers are often working at an unsustainable breakneck pace, and aren’t always sure what data they should be following, or even what data they need to drive improvement, which is where Qventus comes into the picture.

You recently rebranded and relaunched the company as Qventus – why is that?

For some time now, our customers had been telling us that our old name, analyticsMD, didn’t really reflect what we do.  We are more than an analytics company and we serve more than doctors. We took that to heart. As we considered our options we wanted our new name to capture our vision that new technology can help fix some of healthcare’s biggest operational problems. We selected the name Qventus: the “Q” represents the physics symbol for electrical charge; ventus is wind in Latin. With Qventus, we are charging the winds of change. We feel that this reflects our important mission of simplifying how hospitals operate, so that caregivers can focus on delivering the best possible care to patients.

What are some of the big lessons learned on your entrepreneurial journey?

One humbling lesson was to realize that, to some degree, data was useless.  It wasn’t helping the frontline nurse, doctor or manager take an action – about giving them a little nudge to help them make the right decision in the right moment.

What were some of the other challenges in building your company?

We spent several years laying the foundation for success. One such ingredient is being able to pull and analyze messy healthcare data from a variety of different systems and do this in real-time. This allows us to have an active, complete, and instant vision of what’s happening. Another area of focus has been building solid foundation for company growth through positive values. Intellectual honesty, customer empathy and continuous improvement are core to who we are and how we operate, and we believe that the strength of our culture has helped us do right by our customers and each other.

Search