Built To Enjoy: eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani (Part 2)

SM: At PetroVantage, did you focus primarily on technology or did you have a business strategy role there as well?

GN: Technology was one aspect, but I was also exposed to leading a team and making business efficient. I stood my ground quite comfortably when I was exposed to senior executives in other companies like I was during my four weeks in England.

In early 1999 I went to Geneva to attend a conference on wireless technology and its impact on different applications. That is when the whole game changed. I heard a speaker present his vision of wireless technology and the impact it would have on healthcare. He put together a slide showing a patient and doctor inside an examination room. His vision was that wireless would allow the doctor to record information at the point of care and allow it to be a seamless operation. The impact was the physician-to-patient eye contact. They would be able to have a conversation, and the doctor could capture data just like he was doing it on a piece of paper. Wireless technology could support the doctors in the manner in which they were already working.

SM: Was the hand-held computer that the doctor was holding providing reference material?

GN: He did not go into that level of detail. He saw it used to write a prescription and order a lab. It was not the depth of the application as it was the user experience that impressed me about the presenter’s vision. Fortunately, I had not gone on that trip alone. I had two other colleagues with me, one of whom is a physician. To have that experience in the early afternoon and then be able to talk with a physician in the evening about what went on inside his office was very interesting. I saw the contrasting viewpoints of what happened in real life versus what the vision was. With my background, I thought in automated terms. I worked at Teradyne and Fidelity. Digital automation was how I thought. Healthcare in 1999 was not automated. It was archaic.

Writing software was not new to me. I had been writing software on the side for a long time. It was a hobby of mine. I had just written an application prior to that experience which was sold for $10,000 to a small business that used it to create a $5 million  business. When I asked them if they should pay me more for what I did for that small business, the owner told me that I should not have sold it in the first place. That is when I decided that the next time I wrote software I would not sell it to someone else and that I would build a company with it myself.

SM: Is that when eClinicalWorks started?

GN: That is when it started. I had two other guys who were with me in Geneva who also found the scenario as interesting as I did. I decided to bootstrap the business, and I had the two of them start working out of a small office. I funded them out of my salary and my investments.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Built To Enjoy: eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani
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