time (between 34 and 38 percent of their shifts) documenting patient care and feeding the hospital’s legacy information system.
“We’re trying to give nurses back [their] time,” Condurso says. “The advent of mobile platform computing that’s patient-centric and centered on the documentation of all the required information becomes a byproduct, if you will, of the actual care delivered—and we think we can cut that documentation time in half.”
Explaining the underlying concept, Sweeney asks, “When was the last time you memorized a phone number? Hospitals are still forcing nurses to memorize phone numbers metaphorically, instead of using computers to do what computers do—which is capture and record data, and alert you when you need to do things. Why should I as a nurse have to remember that I’m supposed to do something for this patient at 10:07 and then again at 2:32? A computer can tell me to do all that.”
While most of the technology is software-based, Sweeney says PatientSafe spent $1 million with IDEO, the Bay Area design and innovation consulting firm, on product design to make the PatientTouch an all-in-one product. Sweeney also has increased the company’s headcount to more than 100 employees, with about 65 in PatientSafe’s San Diego headquarters.
Since 2003, the company has raised a total of $73 million from venture investors led by Texas-based TPG, including a $30 million round disclosed in 2010, Sweeney says he sees no need to raise additional capital at this time. As of August, PatientSafe had about 60 hospitals under contract throughout the U.S., with about 25 of those projects completed.
“We do all of our own hospital implementation and installation,” Sweeney says. “We’re generating revenue and are forecast to be at break-even next year.”
For the time being, Sweeney says he sees “no direct competition with a handheld device that is even in the neighborhood” of the company’s device.
“I’d say the biggest risk,” Sweeney says, “is the attention span of decision-makers in hospitals, who have been subsumed by reacting to the demands being made by government.” The foremost example, Sweeney says, is meeting the
