Monday, February 23, 2004

Software

MTuitive software takes pathological approach

By Elizabeth Dinan

It's difficult to decide which is more impressive - mTuitive's promising technology or its intensely focused business plan, complete with "rapid" exit strategy to remain private until acquisition within three years.

And it's no wonder the company and its vision are so tight, considering co-founder and CEO John Murphy is a partner with Clarence Ventures and has helped finance and manage 10 companies in the past eight years. Murphy also now sits on the boards of five companies and has held the titles of CEO, COO, CFO and vice president of sales.

At mTuitive, he's building a business around a pair of proprietary software programs designed for Tablet PCs aimed at the health care market, with government and health care education expected to follow. The technology, called Pathology Workstation, automates compliance with new American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer regulations, through Tablet PCs with voice and handwriting recognition capabilities. It also automatically pinpoints exact protocol instructions for pathologists and provides the latest medical research to compare with their own progress.

In other words, it's used by pathologists who examine samples in medical labs to provide and receive data about tumors. Complete lists of checklists are pushed through the software, while the pathologist receives online access to reference material and can call up textbook tumor images for side-by-side comparison with their own slide samples. From there, treatment is developed and compliance is achieved.

The company's first paying customer is The Medical College of Georgia, one of five hospitals to pilot Pathology Workstation. The others, Brigham & Women's, New England Baptist, Cape Cod Hospital and Westerly (R.I.) Hospital, will be buying, says a confident Murphy, adding, "everyone raved about it." Marquette Hospital in Michigan is also reportedly close to a deal and expected to bring several other affiliated hospitals into the mTuitive fold.

The Medical College of Georgia also bought mTuitive's earlier product, Authoring Environment, for managing organ transplant protocols. And the Massachusetts Department of Health has reviewed it in consideration for inspections of facilities like nursing homes and food establishments.

In addition to Murphy's formidable business experience, mTuitive boasts retired Cape Cod Hospital chief surgical pathologist William O'Toole, as its vice president of product design. After 30 years in medical pathology with the Cape hospital, O'Toole had personal knowledge of inaccurate pathology information that he attributes to the translation process of taking textual medical information and turning it into required data.

As mTuitive legend has it, O'Toole thought there had to be a better way. And according to Murphy, he was "adamant" that the product be no more difficult to use than what a doctor is doing already, namely either using a pen and paper, or speaking into a dictaphone.

Teamed with Murphy and several other Cape Cod experts in technology, human factors, medicine and business, O'Toole launched a year of market analysis and product design, leading to last week's unveiling of Pathology Workstation at a Florida health care informatics conference. Here, the product was introduced to its first analyst.

Meanwhile, a couple of mandates tell the mTuitive team the market is right. First, the American College of Surgeons regulations, which took effect in January and secondly, Medicare and other insurers' similar mandates for a set of required data elements to retain hospital accreditation.

"We believe we can help curtail health care costs and reduce error," says Murphy. "So we see a great potential."

Including layering the software foundation, which helps make decisions, with other expert knowledge for application to fields including health care education and Homeland Security.

"That's the strategic value," says Murphy.

So is getting their office space for free and having many of the principals work for stock options only. Meantime, they've outlined details about companies in similar markets, including Cerner and Meditech, both considered potential mTuitive partners.

As a man who's launched a lot of business, Murphy is asked what he'll do after mTuitive's planned rapid exit strategy.

"I don't know," he says. "I'd like to get a midlife crisis."