If we said "improving emergency care in the U.S. and around the world is our mission, passion, and vocation, you might think it was inspiring, or you might think "there's another company trying to sell the EMS industry a better mousetrap."  You might see our software as the harbinger of long-overdue innovation for the First Response industry...or as a commodity that will eventually fade into noise.

But when we took to the road in early 2011 to learn about the First Response marketplace, we began by assuming we knew nothing, and that we wanted to learn about our potential users' needs that weren't already being met.  What specific features and functions would make their lives easier, their jobs safer and measurably more productive?

The MediView™ platform is the sum total of those findings....and we were honored to co-publish a white paper on them with our partner Microsoft.  But at a time when technology entrepreneurship so often consists of copycat "apps" without clear business models or pain-points to solve, the story of how and why we took two years to reach the market wouldn't give you a solid sense of how personal our mission, and whence our passion derives:

Our company's success is and always will be dedicated to William Paxton Witt III and Sarah Elizabeth Witt, who might still be alive today if, after their tragic car wreck, the ambulance operators had had some way to notify the receiving hospital about their incoming patient transport, activate the necessary triage teams, and jump-start their holy business of saving their lives.  The accident happened about 300 miles outside Albuquerque near the "Four Corners," where the distance between treatment facilities is extensive; rural medicine will therefore always be a critical focal area for us. 

By contrast, Jonathon joined the U.S. Army Reserve on September 11, 2011.  He was slated to become a Combat Medic (91W), but because he has Tourette's Syndrome, he was unable to complete the training.  The plight and heroism of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and guardsmen who volunteer to defend the rest of us left an scar all its own: when he met Chris, Jonathon was developing a rapid diagnostic and treatment technology for Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury.  A conversation with the Department of Defense's U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine proved critical.  They said, "We love the idea, but don't know enough about our patients to do therapeutics.  Can you focus on diagnostics?"  

So BLT pivoted with an eye toward the emergency service spectrum, and found an operational hornet's nest that had grown "hyperlocal": just as the American medical establishment is fractured into hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices, and other treatment facilities that tend not to communicate with one another, so too had hospitals, cities, and even states developed redundant, often incompatible software solutions to solve their own problems without a view of the larger ecosystem beyond their borders.  (Some cities we visited even worked through legislative channels when building software to achieve their goals seemed out of reach.)  

Here we found our opportunity to push the status quo forward, and leave a legacy of processes improved, costs reduced, and lives saved. 

Across the U.S., we’ve met with users and buyers of EMS-facing technologies, including disaster management experts, EMS chiefs and fire captains, nurses and site safety managers.  Some First Responders on the frontlines of human lifesaving were unaware that the state of technology today means solutions can be had that are better — yet cheaper — than their 20+ year-old IT systems.  Others knew of more efficient systems but found them cost-prohibitive, comprised of proprietary modules sold piecemeal to cash-strapped cities. Even the military took an unexpectedly antiquated view of mass casualty care; we couldn’t help noticing that our cloud-based MediView™ platform is perfectly poised close the data gap between battlefield and hospital.

In 2011, when potential partners and open-source resources abound, collaboration for social and economic gain is the name of the game, and healthcare is an industry ripe for disruption. Bringing innovation to EMS will save countless lives and oodles of taxpayer and insurance dollars, all while improving patient flow into hospitals. Everybody wins, except those who horde the data. At a time when patients, doctors, regulators and hospital administrators alike have started finding value in data transparency, someone must leap in to prove it can be achieved in a manner that jives with economics. We’re pleased to take that challenge. 

Steadfastly yours,

Jonathon Feit                                Christian Witt

Co-Founder & Chief Executive          Co-Founder & CFO/CTO