Building a Healthcare IT Company out of Georgia: Reach Health Founder Grant Kohler (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: That was your second round of financing?

Grant Kohler: That was the genesis of the first round of financing.

Sramana Mitra: In the first round of financing, you already wanted to go beyond stroke into Telemedicine field to be able to cater to these remote communities.

Grant Kohler: Yes, we needed the resources to be able to do a land grab and bring as many clients as possible to our platform. That was the primary reason for that first round of financing. We were starting to develop that enterprise strategy. It was about getting as many clients on board as we can. We needed more people to go out and help sell this product at that point.

Sramana Mitra: How did that investment piece, against which you raised financing for the first round, pan out?

Grant Kohler: It worked out pretty well for us. We were able to grow our client base quite significantly within that first year after securing that first round of funding.

Sramana Mitra: What was the telemedicine offering?

Grant Kohler: It’s primarily focused around remote delivery of stroke care.

Sramana Mitra: This telemedicine effort was also around stroke care?

Grant Kohler: They are one and the same. The telemedicine effort that we were doing as a company was focused around delivery of stroke care.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of your business, nothing really changed. It’s the same business that you were doing before the funding, right?

Grant Kohler: That’s correct. The funding was primarily used to grow the business with the same technology.

Sramana Mitra: If it’s just growing the same business and using the money to expand your sales force, that’s the same strategy, roughly speaking. Where did you make the next major strategic bet? What is another milestone that is interesting and worth discussing?

Grant Kohler: The next milestone was when we decided to move beyond being just a stroke telemedicine company and started making the play as an enterprise telemedicine platform.

Sramana Mitra: When did that move happen?

Grant Kohler: That happened around the summer of 2009. We started putting together a strategy for being able to deliver multiple service lines on our telemedicine platform.

Sramana Mitra: This is beyond stroke but still using the telemedicine platform to cater to other kinds of health issues?

Grant Kohler: That is correct.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building a Healthcare IT Company out of Georgia: Reach Health Founder Grant Kohler
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