MedModus plans to cut through hospital waiting lists
With more than 4m people on hospital waiting lists in the UK and 650,000 in Ireland, Dublin startup MedModus sees very significant market opportunities for a software tool designed to cut waiting lists.
Set up in 2017 to develop a business platform to improve the efficiency of hospitals, the company later added a waiting list improvement application that standardises and simplifies the process of waiting list forecasting and capacity planning.
“This is unique in being able to automatically and accurately forecast waiting list performance across hundreds of doctor and specialty combinations while taking account of improvement opportunities,” said company chief executive and founder Déaglán MagFhloinn, adding that the first hospital to use it reduced its outpatient waiting list by 30%.
MedModus, which is currently selling to initial clients, has now raised €1m in funding in order to develop sales in Ireland and also to expand into the UK market.
Prior to setting up MedModus, Mr MagFhloinn had a hospital management consultancy business.
“I saw an opportunity to productise what I was doing with hospitals to improve efficiencies — to pull information from different systems, combine and relate it and use it to implement improvements,” he said.
Setting out the requirements for this type of product, he found a business intelligence architect to lead the development and in early 2017 set up MedModus at the Synergy Centre on the TUD campus in Tallaght in Dublin.
Using his own funding to get started, he employed the business intelligence architect as chief technical officer and began trialling the minimum viable product with some hospitals for which he had previously provided management consultancy.
The initial product was a business intelligence system for hospitals to analyse capacity, waiting times, and other quality metrics, using those insights to drive improvement.
The waiting list improvement tool, called fCast is one of its modules.
“FCast allows hospitals to see how efficient their elective services are and to predict waiting list improvements. It automates the complex process of forecasting across multiple hospitals, specialties, and doctors.’’ said Mr MagFhloinn.
Working on the development and testing of its technology platform during 2018, MedModus was ready last year to get to the next level.
In December, it closed a €1m funding-raising round which came through Davy’s EIIS Fund and Enterprise Ireland. EI had already recognised the company as one of its High Potential Start Up firms.
Now employing five people, MedModus is currently recruiting and expects to double its workforce by the end of the year.
“This funding will enable us to significantly expand our product and services in Ireland, the UK, and other countries,’’ said Mr MagFhloinn.
As part of its plan to expand in the UK, it has already employed a sales and marketing person to start demonstrating its products to hospitals.
The key target are hospitals which do no not have sophisticated business intelligence systems, as well as large hospital groups that need to aggregate information from across their organisations.
Mr MagFhloinn said the hospital waiting tool can give MedModus a competitive edge over other business intelligence companies.
The company has also launched a healthcare analytics e-learning platform called MedModus Academy.
“Healthcare professionals can use it to advance their analytic skills and become more self- sufficient,’ said Mr MagFhloinn.
The company’s focus for 2020 is to grow the business in the UK where it has begun makingcontact with potential customers.
“Our primary goal for 2020 is to establish a foothold in the UK market and to sign up to 10 hospitals and other healthcare organisations by the end of the year,” he said.
