Seratis is pioneering a new age in medical communications. The start-up offers a mobile communication platform which helps coordinate, track and analyse care across medical teams – and ultimately improve patient care.
Co-founded by fellow Wharton MBA Lane Rettig, the start-up's team hope to place their service in ten US hospitals by the end of the year. They are already live in one hospital in Texas, and a second “soft-launch” took place this week at a hospital in New Orleans.
The pair also banked $42,000 in funding after winning a start-up competition held by DreamIt Ventures, an accelerator. But they will face many challenges breaking into the heavily-regulated medical tech sector.
How big is the company?
We have three official employees.
Which sector do you operate in?
Healthcare, technology, mobile and communications.
What does the business do and what are your core or flagship products?
Seratis is a care coordination tool that is a secure, patient-centric mobile application which enables doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers to communicate with each other via text, images and videos.
Who is the founder/CEO?
I co-founded the company with Lane Rettig.
How was the company founded?
I met him at Wharton and the initial funding came from DreamIt Ventures, based in Philadelphia. It’s a rotational program. They provided us with $42,000, or up-to, and it helped us create [the product].
Which regions are covered?
We’re got one hospital live in Texas, and a second just started a soft-launch this week in New Orleans. Everyone else is in the pipeline. I want to have ten [by the end of 2014].
Number of current MBAs at the company?
Two.
How helpful has an MBA been in setting up the business?
Healthcare is a hard industry to understand, and it’s hard to do so from the outside. There is space for it but generally people who don’t know it from the inside end up creating businesses that are wellness-orientated as opposed to healthcare-orientated.
I did the Wharton MBA, and did the healthcare management [track]. Wharton has one of the best in world and it really helped; I learnt more about US healthcare policy and specifically the Affordable Healthcare Act. I saw how broken the healthcare system was… I felt that I wanted to do some social justice to try to fix the system.
What do you need to do now to reach your target of 10 clients by the end of 2014?
Publicity. Get ourselves out there and meet as many people as possible. The more we can do to get the word out [the better].
I can’t imagine any doctor saying this problem doesn’t need solving. Europe has it, New Zealand has it, we [the US] have it, and Brazil is currently doing a pilot because they have the same issue. The medical industry is an industry where communication is really important.
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