|
Startups Are Poised to Fly Away from Incubator Nest
Virginia Baldwin Gilbert
Of the Post-Dispatch
Business developer Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise is looking
forward to year's end, when two of its new companies will move out on
their own, to be replaced by two other startups.
Robert Calcaterra, chief executive of one of the region's incubators
for science and technology businesses, is looking forward to emptying
the nest.
He expects by year's end that the Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise
in Creve Coeur will graduate its first two companies.
"They're successful enough, they won't need us anymore," Calcaterra
said. It is, after all, the goal of a business incubator to nurture
new companies until they are ready to fly on their own. They'll start
looking for new digs soon, and their places will be filled quickly by
other startups, Calcaterra said.
Calcaterra expects to announce another company soon.
Both companies are run by doctors with an entrepreneurial bent. Both
provide medical services over the Internet.
Quick Study Radiology Inc. offers digital radiological services to
small hospitals and other medical facilities.
TSV Industries Inc. transcribes doctors' patient-care notes overnight
by sending the voice files over the Internet to India, where workers
convert the notes to text files and e-mail them back by the next business
day.
Bolstering rural health care
"Rural health care has always been very important to me," said Dr.
Skip Sallee, founder of Quick Study Radiology, or QSR.
He is from Ava, Mo., a town 60 miles southeast of Springfield, Mo.,
that's so small, "it just got its first stoplight two years ago," he
said.
QSR is Sallee's third business to offer services to rural medicine.
His first company, started in 1990 in North Carolina, enabled radiologists
to transmit X-ray images over telephone lines. It added services, then
merged with a larger company based in Knoxville, Tenn.
But Sallee said he always wanted to move back to his home state. So
in 1997, he convinced his new wife, Christine, to move to Missouri and
start a third business, aimed at small hospitals of 300 beds or less.
The move made business sense, he said. Of the 4,000 small hospitals
in the United States, 900 are in Missouri or bordering states, Sallee
said.
So far, QSR's clients are two imaging labs in St. Louis and community
hospitals in Ste. Genevieve and Perryville.
It installs the equipment to digitally create and store images - X-rays,
CAT scans and MRI scans. Instead of looking at traditional gray-scale
films on light boards, doctors view images on computer screens.
The software allows doctors to pull up as many as 100 images at a
time, comparing them side-by-side in a virtual 3-D effect, or rolling
through them from one view to the next.
It also allows offices and hospitals to archive images on a computer
server instead of warehousing films. Because the law requires that such
records be kept for seven years for adults and up to 22 years for children,
eliminating bulky film storage is a big savings, Sallee said.
Small hospitals also can send images over the Internet to specialists,
who help decide if a patient should be transferred for treatment. "It's
much better to see the picture than just listen to a verbal description,"
Sallee said.
QSR establishes a dedicated network that connects to the Internet
using technology that is 28 times faster than a conventional dial-up
connection. And it puts terminals all over a hospital, so doctors can
call up an image without leaving the emergency room or intensive-care
unit.
Such technology would require a capital outlay of about $2 million
- more than a 300-bed hospital could afford, Sallee said. Nor can most
small hospitals afford the information technology staff needed to monitor
and maintain the equipment and keep it running around the clock.
"We absorb the capital expense, and (customers) pay a per-scan fee,"
Sallee said. The fee varies but is roughly the same as what hospitals
spend to take and store a non-digital scan. A study by the Mayo Clinic
found that hospitals spend $15 to $30 to take and store conventional
scans.
QSR's computer technicians install the system, train the hospital
staff and monitor the network from the office in the Nidus Center, checking
each terminal every 15 seconds for problems.
"If we can fix it remotely, we do. If we can't, we send someone out
immediately," Sallee said.
QSR is handling about 70,000 scans a year and has the capacity to
deal with more than 1 million a year.
"When we grow beyond that point, we'll need another facility," Sallee
said.
Timing is crucial
Medical transcription is about a $15 billion industry in the United
States, said Dr. Avinash Amin, co-founder of TSV Industries. Doctors
typically save time by dictating, rather than writing, their notes from
patient examinations. Then transcriptionists in a hospital, doctor's
office or an outside agency convert the spoken words into written notes
for a medical chart.
The problem, said Amin, is that the United States has a shortage of
transcriptionists, and many doctors' offices wait a week or more to
get the notes.
"Turnaround is very important with medical information," Amin said.
"We can turn work around in 12 hours," because of the time difference
between India and St. Louis.
TSV employs 40 transcriptionists in India, who work day shifts there,
using computer technology and medical knowledge to convert sound files
into word files. India's lower labor costs are just part of the reason
TSV sends information halfway around the world to be processed.
The time of day also is crucial. Even if Amin could find 40 transcriptionists
willing to work a graveyard shift in the United States, he said he'd
have to pay premium wages.
Amin said he and his co-founders, Dr. David Brown of St. Louis and
Dr. Manish Patel of Bombay, India, got their idea from software companies
that contract some of their work to be done at night in India.
Amin, a native St. Louisan, and Patel, a native of Bombay, are cousins
and friends. Amin visited Patel about 11 years ago, when Amin was in
medic al school and Patel was starting a beverage business.
"I had a burgeoning interest in business, but I didn't know how to
express that," said Amin, who completed his residency in internal medicine
at Washington University in 1999.
About two years ago, Patel suggested the setup TSV uses today. Having
a founder in each country to oversee business operations differentiates
their company from others trying to offer similar services, Amin said.
Brown, an in-patient physician at Barnes-Jewish West Hospital and
a former medical school classmate of Amin's, is chief operating officer
of TSV.
The company began pilot projects with friends and colleagues and gradually
grew over the last 18 months. Last week, it promoted one of its four
part-time U.S. employees to full time to manage the St. Louis office.
Within the next six months, Amin said, TSV hopes to double the number
of employees in India to 80.
Dr. John Ellena signed on with TSV more than two months ago. He had
heard about the company from another doctor. The cost is about the same
as using a local agency that charged 12 cents a line, said Ellena, an
internist in Creve Coeur.
But TSV's service is faster - 12 hours versus 48 hours for the agency.
It has made a difference particularly in Ellena's practice of sending
patients a letter about results of every lab test.
"We used to tell people they'd get their letters in seven to 10 days,"
he said. "Now they usually go out in 24 hours."
A year ago, TSV's "income was at a trickle," Amin said. "We had one
client. Last month, our revenue was about $25,000. That's the break-even
point."
= = = =
TSV Industries Inc.
Address: Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise, 893 North Warson
Road
Phone: 314-812-8025
Web site: www.tsvindustries.com
Founded: 2000
Employees: Four in St. Louis, 40 in India
Business: Medical transcription
Quick Study Radiology Inc.
Address: Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise, 893 North Warson
Road
Phone: 314-812-8156
Web site: www.QS-R.com
Founded: 2000
Employees: 52
Business: Digital radiological services
back to articles
index
back to top
|
