PHOTO/MATT VOLPINI
Girish Navani, CEO, eClinicalWorks
January 5, 2015
Shop Talk
Q&A with Girish Navani, CEO, eClinicalWorks
Girish Navani, Co-founder
and CEO, eClinicalWorks, Westborough
By Rick Saia
Girish Navani, co-founder and CEO, eClinicalWorks, Westborough
RESIDENCE: Shrewsbury
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree, Gujarat University (India); master’s, Boston University
As the waves of change envelop the U.S. health care industry, eClinicalWorks appears to be surfing them effectively. The provider of health care technology, such as electronic health records (EHR) systems, says it had another record-setting year in 2014, with expected revenue of more than $300 million. The company's co-founder and CEO, Girish Navani, believes the company will grow more in the next five years than it has the last five. The company says it has most of the U.S. health center market, with 700 of them using its technology.
How do you see the road ahead for the health care informatics market?
I think that (we're) in the first inning of a pretty spectacular change. The digitization of health care has happened to a great extent in the last five, six years, which (has meant) good growth for the company. Once you get past that stage of digitizing an entire industry, the actual fun starts, because you can start looking at information and coming up with actionable decisions that could improve outcomes and that could create better patient experiences.
Can you give us a couple of examples of things that are happening?
Think about this: A patient is on a particular medication that gets recalled because of whatever reason the FDA assumes is valid. In the past, we used to send faxes to the physicians' offices, and tell them, “If you see patients with this medication, tell them to not take it.” The compliance with something like that is less than 10 percent, because even if you read that fax, remembering it for every patient that you see is not easy. Now, let's say that the capability exists within the technology you're leveraging, and (it) tells you, “If you see a patient with that medication, stop. Talk to the patient; give them an alternative.” Now you can get into the 90th percentile of compliance.
It hasn't been exactly easy to bring clinicians, especially doctors, into the world of IT. But now that they're using such tools, has that mountain been climbed?
I think so. Today, if we look at our business, we are in what I would call a “make-the-switch” program in our core vertical, which is the EHR business. The physicians are on our system, so we are not doing (a) net paper to electronic (system); we're actually doing electronic to electronic. I'm not saying every company is going to serve their customers well for the next five years, 10 years. But the companies that do … will actually grow the market on the digital side. We have climbed that mountain.
In a recent interview, you said you foresee eClinicalWorks as a vertically integrated company for health care and even wellness. How do you see that working?
(We have) our tagline, “Improving health care together.” We think that use of technology with the provider, and the provider and the patient being in constant communication, creates better health care dynamics. And being preventive is better than trying to be reactive. So the wellness component comes in, guiding patients before they get sick. Managing them through a process proactively is as important a part of health care's change as the reactive side. This won't occur unless payers are changing their payment models, which we are seeing.
You also said you like “intrapreneurship” as a path to growth rather than growing by acquisition. Do you think that, for you, there might be exceptions to that?
There can be exceptions. This is my belief. I am completely convinced that the whole idea of being an entrepreneur is being an entrepreneur for life. And that doesn't mean you sell what you created, and find something else to create after you sold the first one. I think you create the first one and then you let that idea and that business fund other initiatives.
Spinning off companies or business units or ideas with the (main) work in place is even more fascinating than selling eClinicalWorks, taking that capital, funding 20 other startups and seeing if two of them make it. (That's) a model I don't think I can follow. I love the idea of being an entrepreneur for life. This gives me that great way of having the cake and eating it too.
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