MedText
Making Excellent Healthcare Delivery an Easy Feat

When you hear the term ‘healthcare innovation,’ what comes to your mind first? Is it the nanorobots that can swim through a patient’s bloodstream to deliver drugs in a highly targeted manner? Or a diet scanner that reveals all of the major nutritional elements of a meal? Or 3D printed limbs that can’t be distinguished from an actual limb in terms of form or function? While these medical advancements are certainly promising, all digital modernisations in the healthcare industry don’t always need to be so intricate to be beneficial. Sometimes, even a simple digital upgrade of a manual process can bring a world of difference if it can solve an age-old problem.

A case in point would be how Czech Republic’s healthcare space has been digitalising its collaboration workflow with different participants of the care delivery ecosystem. Typically, if a patient requires specialised care in a medical facility, it is necessary to alert the hospital about the patient’s condition before arrival. The paramedics contact the dispatcher over telephone or handheld transceivers and brief them on the patient’s vitals and the primary care they have provided. The dispatch team then conveys the information to the nurses of the selected hospital upon arrival. The data is further relayed to the on-call physicians and specialists of different departments, either verbally or through pagers. Now, when data has to pass through such multiple checkpoints, it is not uncommon for the information to become distorted. “Imagine if a paramedic is attending to a burn victim who needs immediate treatment, but they have to go through roughly 15 phone calls and coordinate with ambulances and hospitals. This carries a high risk of information loss as everyone is relying on verbal communication,” narrates Lukas Busek, a renowned thought leader in the European healthcare industry and CEO of MedText.

We believe that it is 85 percent about people and 15 percent about technology. It’s really the change process or a mindset that the organisation needs to change in order to adopt technology

To address this issue, Lukas mentions, Czech Republic’s emergency medical services (EMS) recently introduced “electronic pre-alert” into their operations. Unlike a phone call, this process is fast, reliable, and accurate. Because crews can pass on a patient’s status and care information to the regional command and dispatch centres by simply filling out an online form on a tablet or smartphone, along with relevant pictures. As soon as the data specific for the type of event (arm injury or a heart attack) is logged, it can be relayed to every care provider, ambulance service, and front-line paramedics involved in the process, thereby saving the time, effort, and information loss during emergency medical services. The regional command centre can quickly set up the required mode of transport—by road or by air—based on the severity of the case. Meanwhile, the paramedic team can take pictures of patients and share that with destination hospitals through the pre-alert system to make them aware of the necessary level of care the patient might require. “So essentially, the necessity of making 15 phone calls is reduced to only five clicks within the pre-alert app, and everybody knows exactly what is going on,” states Lukas.

Another aspect of the pre-alert platform is GDPR compliant audio/video calling that allows teams across organisations to join 1:1 or team calls. This is especially beneficial in the situation when a paramedic needs specific consultation from their doctor peers.

The mastermind behind such an innovative digital communication tool was none other than Lukas’s company, MedText.

Drawing from its years of experience in the healthcare IT arena, MedText has developed a simple, secure, and GDPR-compliant eponymous healthcare communication tool that serves as the backbone of Czech EMS’ pre-alert system. “Building on our brand promise of empathy, simplicity, and reliability, MedText messaging app aims to make excellent healthcare easier,” underscores Lukas. “While our aspect of ‘empathy’ is devoted to creating a solution that feels tailor-made for you, ‘simplicity,’ on the other hand, makes our offering a perfect blend of the tools you need and nothing that you don’t. And finally, ‘reliability’ assures that you can depend on us.”

Prioritising the Needs of Healthcare Providers

Notably, the idea of MedText sparked during an extensive healthcare market research that Lukas and his team were conducting throughout Europe. “While doing so, we found out that despite the best efforts to make healthcare better, the early efforts of digitalisation have only made it more difficult, time-consuming, and complicated for healthcare providers. Elaborating on the underlying reason, Lukas explains that digitalisation endeavours for healthcare firms have so far been focused on the needs of hospital administration. These digitalisation projects have thus unintentionally overlooked simplifying the clinical care delivery models. “Subsequently, we saw a majority of care providers using social messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal to communicate with patients and other participants in the care delivery,” shares Lukas.

The landscape, however, changed with the introduction of GDPR in May 2018, prohibiting healthcare personnel from using consumer messaging apps. But they still needed communication tools that were more seamless and efficient than traditional pagers and phone calls. This understanding is what led MedText to create a secure platform that is just as quick, easy and effective as a normal messaging app but can be utilised within and even outside of hospitals, in accordance with GDPR regulations. MedText’s messaging platform is easy to learn and secured with technical and operational safeguards that allow healthcare professionals to rapidly share patient information among caregivers while maintaining full compliance with data privacy legislation. “We believe that the healthcare providers are already best at what they do. They don’t need technological complications that hinder their efficiency. Instead, they need a technology which makes it easier for them to do their job and requires zero training,” Lukas adds further.

A Winning Business Model that Breeds Success for All

MedText follows a strict B2B businesses model focused primarily on hospitals and ambulance services.

The company offers its communication solution via a SaaS model. Any healthcare organisation can subscribe to the solution and create additional user accounts within the platform. Their partners can then download the MedText app from Google Play Store or App Store and start using it right away. Even though MedText’s healthcare messaging tool is already intuitive and easy to use, the company also offers onboarding services, training healthcare providers on how to unleash the complete benefits of the messaging app. “We believe that it is 85 percent about people and 15 percent about technology. It’s really the change process or a mindset that the organisation needs to change in order to adopt technology,” adds Lukas.

A Company Driven by Strong Leadership Principles

According to Lukas, it is the spontaneous work culture that drives MedText in each and every endeavour it undertakes. “In my personal life, I have a go-getter attitude. And I try to imbibe the same values among my peers at MedText,” shares Lukas. “We encourage each other to think critically and constructively about the solution we set out to build and then use our combined expertise to develop those features. This way, we always come up with the most innovative features for our MedText platform.” Besides, following this open office culture, where the top-tier executives work alongside every team member, MedText ensures utmost quality at every stage of the client engagement process.

Naturally, such an innovative office culture undoubtedly results in better customer experience. Despite a smaller workforce, every member of the MedText team is ever-present for its clients. “We are MedText and we never go down. Serving the healthcare sector means we are always there to support our clients 24/7,” underscores Lukas.

Moving Towards a Healthy Future

Having already carved a niche of its own, MedText is now looking forward to both technological as well as geographic expansion in the coming months. MedText has already onboarded eight out of 14 ambulance service providers in the Czech Republic and wants to add the remaining ones in the near future. “We are also seeing a significant uptick in the number of hospitals using our communication platform,” adds Lukas. Apart from Czech hospitals, some Swiss and British hospitals have recently expressed interest in the MedText platform. The latest addition is a country-wide installation in the Central Europe. With such allaround popularity of its innovative communication app, there is no denying that MedText’s future looks bright in every account. “We intend to double our customer base in the next one year and show the revolution that a simplified technology can bring to the healthcare sector,” concludes Lukas.