the only people on the Cerner training team to have a clinical background, he said he was the busiest person there. “Everyone wanted to work with me,” he added.
That gave him the idea to approach EHR training as a physician-to-physician conversation. Today, DMI works with TechTown and local hospital residency programs to recruit young, tech-savvy doctors to join the team, and once the doctors are screened, they’re added to the company roster. (DMI calls on them to work according to project length and technical expertise required.) Saad said he’s currently got doctors in all 50 states.
The two-person DMI team has bootstrapped the company so far, and Saad said he plans to continue that way for the foreseeable future. In 2016, DMI will recruit more employees through a partnership with the residency program at the University of Maryland hospital, expand international efforts, and hopes to score business related to the U.S. Department of Defense hospital system’s decision to change over to Cerner, a process that Saad predicted will take three to five years. With hospitals investing hundreds of millions in EHR systems, Saad sees DMI as having a vital role in the adoption of those technologies.
“The Hippocratic Oath says, ‘If I don’t know something, I will seek out colleagues.’ Just like doctors consult on patients, we consult on health IT,” he said. “We’re a trusted colleague and partner. The idea is to advance patient care and move medicine forward.”
