Mobile Devices in Healthcare To Bridge Security Concerns with Scott Hondros, Vice President of Services, Commercialization, and Strategy at CenTrak

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket. Super excited that you joined us today.

[00:00:07] I have the privilege of hosting the amazing Scott Hondros today. He is the vice president

[00:00:14] of Services, Commercialization and Strategy at Centrac, which offers locating, sensing

[00:00:20] and security solutions for the healthcare industry. Centrac has helped more than 2000 healthcare

[00:00:26] organizations around the world build safer, more efficient enterprise. So excited to have

[00:00:31] him here Scott. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm looking

[00:00:35] forward to our discussion today. Likewise, likewise. So hey, before we dig in, we'd love to hear

[00:00:40] more about you. What is it that got you into healthcare? Yeah, so interestingly enough, I didn't

[00:00:46] come into healthcare with a long and leaked background in the medical industry. So 12 years ago,

[00:00:52] my wife had a very complex pregnancy with our son Hunter and she was on bedrest in the hospital

[00:01:00] for approximately three months. And during that time, I would go there on the weekends and at night

[00:01:07] and I really started saying, man, there's a lot of folks other than the doctors and the nurses

[00:01:12] that are making this place kind of operate and tick. And so you would see the cleaning crew from

[00:01:18] EVS. You would see the engineering folks, the biomed technicians, the IT individuals coming in

[00:01:24] and out of the room just when you're somewhere for multiple months, you really get to appreciate

[00:01:30] all that goes into it. And so I walked away saying, man, this is a fascinating industry and one

[00:01:37] that I think I could really find myself having a career in. And so from there, I began kind of

[00:01:44] looking at opportunities in the healthcare sector and here I am 12, 13 years later talking to you.

[00:01:49] Amazing. And actually before we hit record, you were sharing about your son and his ski racing.

[00:01:56] So he's doing well. Yeah, yeah, he just turned 12 this week. And so it's been a time of reflection

[00:02:02] really looking back and saying, okay, wow, 12 years ago, I began in this industry and healthcare

[00:02:08] with a small startup company at the time. And so it really is fascinating. The time has flown by

[00:02:15] the people I've met, the colleagues I've had the privilege of working with and then the clients

[00:02:19] that we've been able to serve has been truly an exciting and remarkable journey. So hopefully I

[00:02:24] could share a little bit about that today and share some of the road to that. I love that. Yeah,

[00:02:29] for sure. And so thank you for sharing that Scott and Kudos to Hunter and Miss Hondras for going

[00:02:35] what they go through to give us the inspiration we need as leaders in this business. It's much

[00:02:40] necessary. So let's dig in, let's dig into Centraq. What does a company do to help the healthcare

[00:02:46] ecosystem? So Centraq is a company as you shared as we were getting going here. We kind of explain it

[00:02:52] as you know, indoor GPS or indoor locating. Centraq is able to provide the software, the hardware and

[00:02:59] the services, which makes us unique in the industry. And what we are really aiming to do is

[00:03:05] trying make staff more efficient so that they can deliver more timely and better patient care or

[00:03:12] take out manual processes by automating those with different technology and software that we offer.

[00:03:17] And so it really is not about being IT focused or one little use case. What Centraq does is really

[00:03:26] touch on all of those touch points that a patient or a clinician experiences as they go through

[00:03:32] their care and go through their daily work. And that can be from managing the assets that move

[00:03:38] around the facility and understanding where those are in real time to taking away the need for a

[00:03:43] nurse to go and manually document temperatures. And so we are able to automate all of those processes

[00:03:49] and really try and make the clinicians and the other ancillary staff more efficient. That's great.

[00:03:55] Yeah, efficiency is the game here with all the burnout and understaffed facilities that are

[00:04:01] dealing with the stress. If you had to capture the best way that really separates you guys,

[00:04:07] you do things differently. What would you say that is? Yeah, so hospitals, even if you don't work

[00:04:12] in them on a regular basis like we do, when you go in there, there's lots of rooms and corridors

[00:04:18] and I say nooks and crannies, a lot of places for things to go. And so what Centraq was able to do

[00:04:25] years ago was develop a technology that was able to get very precise room level locating. And

[00:04:31] what we call clinical grade locating, and it is so important in the healthcare industry that we

[00:04:37] know what room a particular patient or staff member is in. And a lot of what we do integrates with

[00:04:43] the electronic medical records. And so if I'm able to say that Daniel is in exam room one versus

[00:04:51] a multitude of exam rooms, that accuracy is something that Centraq has really built our foundation

[00:04:57] on and our technology on. So the room level locating is something that we integrate into as many

[00:05:02] of our use cases as possible. That's interesting. So that seems to be the cornerstone. And it sounds

[00:05:08] like it could apply to patients, clinicians, even devices. Absolutely. It's balancing. It's always

[00:05:15] balancing the investment and the infrastructure to get you to that right level of granularity. And so

[00:05:21] in an operating room setting, we want as much granularity as possible in an exam room setting and

[00:05:26] outpatient setting that granularity is great. However, maybe in a basement area that's more operational,

[00:05:33] we may not have as much granularity and maybe just have the location sensors and hallways

[00:05:38] and the core areas where equipment might be stored. And so it's having the knowledge of how things

[00:05:45] and people move around the medical center and figuring out how that granularity needs to be applied,

[00:05:51] realizing that there's a financial component to this that always must be in the back of our

[00:05:55] mind so that we can get the right balance but also have the right granularity in the end because

[00:06:00] it really is trying to find a needle in a haystack. And with this technology, we were able to

[00:06:06] really get you right to the room where that particular asset or patient or staff member may be.

[00:06:11] That's fascinating, Scott. And so when customers typically come and knock on your door and they say,

[00:06:16] hey, we need help, what problem are they coming to you with usually?

[00:06:20] So that's interesting. A lot of times we get requests, a director or a vice president will go

[00:06:25] to a big conference and he or she will come to us for a challenge that their individual

[00:06:30] department may be facing. And so we may have a chief nursing officer who comes to us and says,

[00:06:36] you know what? We're having a lot of issues with staff safety and we really need to find a

[00:06:41] staff-dress solution. Is that something you guys offer or a biomed director will come to us and say

[00:06:47] we're really having a challenge hitting our PM compliance on an annual basis?

[00:06:52] Is that something you guys can help us do? And so what we end up having is these conversations

[00:06:59] that really allow us to understand are there more pain points and challenges that this technology

[00:07:05] can solve? Because that's really what it's all about. If you're able to solve the nurse safety

[00:07:11] issue for the CNO and you're able to solve the biomed challenge and you're able to do this in this

[00:07:16] all with the same technology, then the value prop and the ROI is much easier to achieve. And so we go

[00:07:23] in and really try and work with those individual department leaders to develop and document what

[00:07:29] their challenges are and what we think we can actually do from a predicted standpoint to improve

[00:07:34] upon that. And we put it all together in a very professional business model-like package

[00:07:39] and deliver that back to the executive team at the organization to then say, you know what? This

[00:07:44] really does make sense from a financial standpoint and a need standpoint.

[00:07:48] That's great. Thank you Scott. Yeah. And folks, you guys heard the entire series we did

[00:07:53] on the abuse, the bullying, the insavility that happens in healthcare. Scott, we just did one.

[00:07:58] It was like a seven-part series where Mary Beth Kingston, CNO of Advocate Health kind of

[00:08:04] recruited just top voices in the area to talk about this problem specifically. So very cool to hear

[00:08:09] that this could be a solution for that problem, but it sounds like many more problems and it's

[00:08:14] just a matter of listening to what's going on and finding a way to address it. It absolutely is.

[00:08:21] We staff our team and my colleagues are former clinicians and former hospital administrators.

[00:08:27] And so when you mentioned something about staff safety, we have a colleague of mine, Mary Jaagum,

[00:08:32] who was the president of the Emergency Nurses Association, feels very passionate about

[00:08:37] nurse safety. And so we try and bring that expertise if we're talking about hand hygiene

[00:08:43] in infection control. We have some former epidemiologists on our team. And so we really try and

[00:08:47] bring those peers to the conversation so that we are having a very transparent dialogue that

[00:08:53] allows us to really help them because in the end being able to solve their challenges long-term

[00:09:00] is good for the organization and it's good for us as a business to have that long-term relationship.

[00:09:05] Totally, yeah I love that. And so if you had to point to any particular setbacks, we oftentimes

[00:09:12] as business leaders learn more from those than the wins. What one would you think of that maybe

[00:09:18] has made you even better as a company or as a leader yourself? You know I think being aware that

[00:09:24] the industry and technology is changing. As I mentioned earlier, Cintrac had founded a technology

[00:09:30] based on infrared light and room level locating many many years ago. And it was very successful

[00:09:38] and still is very successful for our company. But I think realizing that there are new technologies

[00:09:45] like Bluetooth that lots of companies in the IoT space and the RTLS space have been developing

[00:09:52] over the last few years, it was something that as a company we had to say okay you know what

[00:09:57] there are new technologies that will allow us to be as precise as what we kind of built our

[00:10:02] organization on. But allow us to continue to innovate and so I really think not being stagnant

[00:10:08] in what got you to a point of success but continuously innovating is always been something that

[00:10:14] I've been very passionate about and Cintrac is certainly invest a lot in that continued

[00:10:18] innovation. So we're excited about some of the things that we have coming down the line both

[00:10:22] on a software and a hardware standpoint based on that innovation so that we can be talking 10 years

[00:10:28] from now about what we've done today. So I would say it continuous innovation is something in any

[00:10:33] industry, any leader should constantly be looking to develop. That's great. Yeah and it gives energy

[00:10:39] to the organization. You got a solid base and then you could introduce new game changing things

[00:10:45] that gets everybody even more excited, more inspired that that's definitely a win for everyone

[00:10:49] especially customers. So I love that you focus there Scott and so you guys are knee deep in technology

[00:10:56] both hardware software. What do you think is a healthcare trend or technology that's going to

[00:11:01] change healthcare as we know it? With outstanding two cliche I do think that AI is going to be

[00:11:07] extremely influential, you know as I look at the IoT space not in the broader healthcare market

[00:11:13] I believe that as well but I can speak to the IoT space specifically and I also think mobile devices

[00:11:18] and so I kind of touch on both of those briefly. Our business is about providing actionable location

[00:11:26] data for clinicians and for the ancillary staff in order to do that even more successfully

[00:11:33] and more efficiently and more accurately harnessing some of the capabilities of AI and the predicted

[00:11:39] aspects and the prescriptive aspects are extremely excited and when I talk about that I'll give

[00:11:45] some specific examples. If I am looking for a patient for instance that I have to go round on as

[00:11:51] part of my daily routing as a doctor and that patient actually has gone down to radiology and

[00:11:58] they're not in their room. The ability to take the analytics in the AI to look at that where that

[00:12:04] patient is, look at that clinician schedule where that clinician is based on their location data

[00:12:09] and say hey this patient's not there let me actually modify your rounding schedule to accommodate

[00:12:15] for that. The time that it's going to save from going to rooms where patients are not currently

[00:12:20] located it's immense and so you do that literally thousands of times a day. And the same thing with

[00:12:25] the operational aspects of equipment. So most of these medical centers have a thousand bed hospital

[00:12:32] typically has 20,000 or more mobile medical devices and so you are looking at 20,000 pieces of

[00:12:39] equipment. The ability to use some prescriptive aspects to say okay we know the PM compliance is

[00:12:44] coming up for this particular asset and it's not in use right now this is a good time to go get it

[00:12:49] and to actually create those work orders for those biomed technicians all of those little things if

[00:12:55] we can take our standard use cases that were already working on ROI on and really fine tune those

[00:13:01] over and over again using some of these new tools it's going to be super exciting and I think the

[00:13:07] mobile device aspect is something that years ago no hospital wanted to touch there was security

[00:13:12] concerns and PHI concerns. And while that still is a relevant concern in the industry, the

[00:13:18] amount of data now that is being shared on mobile devices for the staff at a hospital is exciting

[00:13:24] and so being able to harness the location data from a mobile device and use that operationally is where

[00:13:31] you're going to see some major improvements and as you mentioned earlier as we start facing more

[00:13:36] nursing shortages and staff burnout all of these things to make their days a little bit easier

[00:13:41] and more efficient are going to allow hospitals to operate with a leaner staff. Yeah appreciate that

[00:13:47] there's huge opportunities to take an innovative base that you guys have created layer on AI

[00:13:53] to take it to the next level is definitely exciting and it's cool to hear that you guys are adding

[00:13:57] value not only operationally but clinically and just overall just a great opportunity. So folks

[00:14:03] lots of opportunities to really think about your approach in your operations and your clinical outcomes

[00:14:09] how can you take it to the next level will leave send tracks information and the show notes here

[00:14:14] for you to take a look at the work that they're doing Scott and his team is up to Scott we're

[00:14:19] here at the end why don't you go ahead and leave us with the closing thought and then the best place

[00:14:23] you want the listeners to reach out to you for more info. A lot of what I tell my team and what

[00:14:28] I've learned over the years is really talk to that boots on the ground staff you can sit in a

[00:14:33] conference room and hear what you know maybe the sea sweet challenges are but take that but also go

[00:14:39] and dig a little bit deeper and really understand you know what the front line staff is facing

[00:14:44] across the organization so that when you start trying to really solve the challenges you truly

[00:14:49] are making an impact because that's where as I mentioned earlier we're all in this for the patients

[00:14:54] the families and for the staff and so make sure that what you were actually providing to the

[00:15:00] organization is hitting that mark. We have a lot of interesting technologies both software hardware

[00:15:06] as well as our professional services you guys can check it out at centragg.com we also have a

[00:15:11] pretty intense LinkedIn presence that our marketing team does a great job with so you can follow

[00:15:15] us on LinkedIn as well but be happy to answer any questions so feel free to reach out to us.

[00:15:21] Amazing Scott folks take up Scott on his offer to learn more we'll link up everything from their

[00:15:27] LinkedIn channel to the company that he just shared centragg.com Scott appreciate you jumping on with

[00:15:33] us and for everything you do. Yeah absolutely thank you for having me this was a lot of fun