Health Tech: Girish Navani Of eClinicalWorks On How Their Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness

An Interview With David Leichner

Feel passionate about the technology you’re creating. Remember that passion when you wake up every morning and re-energize yourself. Use it as a reminder that what you’re doing is bigger than you or any one individual.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Girish Navani.

Girish Navani helps set the eClinicalWorks vision, leading efforts to grow and expand all aspects of the business, and actively manages its Research & Development pursuits. His efforts assist in securing eClinicalWorks as both a pioneer and leader in the healthcare IT industry. He was named to Boston Business Journal’s 2014 Power50 list of most influential people in Boston, honored as a 2010 Mass High Tech All-Stars honoree and received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2009 Award in the Healthcare Technology category in New England. Navani also was chosen for the Boston Business Journal’s 2006 40 Under 40 list of entrepreneurs and innovators. Prior to cofounding eClinicalWorks, Navani led successful IT and business initiatives at Fidelity Investments, Aspen Technology and Teradyne. He holds a Master of Science in Manufacturing Engineering from Boston University.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in a very motivated family. While I was always interested in tech, my sister was always interested in medicine. In hindsight, it’s not surprising that I got into healthcare, but it was a mixture of coincidence and timing — not necessarily planning.

My sister was a doctor for an independent practice with her husband, which allowed me to see how healthcare gets delivered. Even at that point, I noticed how much could be improved. However, the true catalyst to my involvement with healthcare was when I was attending a conference in Geneva. I came across a presentation about the evolution of the wireless industry and how it would affect healthcare and the provider and patient relationship. Sitting through the discussion, it was clear that healthcare was lagging behind the technology curve. This was in 1999. At that moment, I recognized the great opportunity in front of me. That same year, I founded eClinicalWorks with the goal of becoming a tech entrepreneur by developing technology that digitizes all aspects of healthcare.

It’s been over two decades since the company began but we continue to steadily achieve milestones. Now I can proudly say that today, 400 million visits — or about 25% of outpatient visits in the U.S. — happen using eClinicalWorks software. That’s a significant number and one to celebrate.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

It’s hard to focus on a single story, but the ones that always stick with me the most are those of patients. I can remember one particularly profound interaction at an eClinicalWorks conference in Nashville, TN. After my presentation, a couple came up to me. The woman said, “Your technology saved my husband’s life. If not for the technology, he wouldn’t have received the care and intervention he needed.” In another instance, a U.S. veteran said that if it weren’t for our chronic care module, he probably would not be here because he wouldn’t have survived.

When you hear these stories once, twice or even three times, it makes you realize the change we have on social causes like healthy living. eClinicalWorks is creating these positive outcomes for patients every day, and we get to see the direct impact of our work. How many other industries can say that?

This is what drives me every day: knowing that our technology helps providers make a difference in people’s lives.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

From a career perspective, I am grateful every day to work alongside my colleagues at eClinicalWorks. The journey of becoming a tech entrepreneur, and especially being a CEO and co-founder, is a difficult one. Your company becomes such an important part of your life that it’s hard not to let it consume you. My family, employees, and co-workers keep me centered amidst all the challenges that I face every day as an entrepreneur.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Before he retired, my father was a civil engineer who constructed large bridges. When I was a child, we crossed one of the bridges he helped build. He said, “That’s a bridge I built, and it’s going to outlast me. So, build something in your lifetime that outlasts you.” Building something in my lifetime that outlasts me has always been a guiding principle and how I come to work every day. eClinicalWorks was founded as a privately held company unlike many other technology companies. Rather than starting a company that IPOs, focus on building a company that constantly evolves and will outlast its founders.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

The three-character traits critical to my own success, and of any entrepreneur, are drive, curiosity, and empathy.

• Drive is what keeps you striving for perfection. It’s the long hours trying to improve your product and the work it takes to get past stubborn obstacles. When I first started eClinicalWorks, I was familiar with the healthcare space, but my expertise was with technology. My internal drive allowed me to recognize the opportunity for improvement and take it.
• I wouldn’t be where I am today without curiosity. Every entrepreneur and business leader needs a healthy dose of it to succeed. Knowing how to ask the right questions allows you to access information you might have otherwise missed out on. It lets you see the gaps that others don’t see, and fill them in.
• Empathy is often overlooked in business, but it takes you far as a leader. At eClinicalWorks, our motto is “Improving healthcare together.” This means caring for one another and working together to better the lives of those around us and in our communities.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the technology or medical devices that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

We have a broad goal: to make the delivery of healthcare faster, more affordable, and more accessible, and to improve the quality of healthcare for everyone. We do this by digitizing healthcare.

For a patient with dementia receiving care in North Carolina, technology is enhancing their delivery of care. Providers without a healthcare solution that shares data with other systems will need to rely on the patient to learn about their medical history. That patient with dementia may have a hard time articulating their health challenges because of their impaired memory. Healthcare providers can’t rely on a single source to give them access to all patient data if they’re going to serve a wider population.

We’re focused on how we’re going to improve providers’ efficiency and patient outcomes. By lasering in on that, we can continue to improve healthcare delivery.

How do you think your technology can address this?

Technology is making healthcare more efficient and reliable by digitizing everything. As in the case of the provider caring for a patient with dementia in North Carolina, a healthcare provider could avoid this issue if they had a system that spoke with other systems. PRISMA, the health information search engine, which lets providers see the entire longitudinal view of a patient, including all historical data points from a different town, doctor, or hospital. PRISMA collates and computes data so clinicians can provide data-driven decisions to better aid with value-based care delivery. This is game-changing — even life changing — to serve a patient no matter their history or background. Broad data-sharing among all EHRs and all healthcare systems can help to improve outcomes like this one and promote better patient care.

In terms of managing practice growth, the cloud offers a cost-effective solution. If you think about all the data just one patient creates, it’s too costly and complex for on premise servers. Transitioning to the cloud, like the eClinicalWorks Cloud EHR, helps practices scale in a sustainable way. With unlimited storage, scalability, and computing power healthcare practices don’t have to worry about taking on too many patients at once. Organizations can grow faster and more effectively. The cloud is accessible wherever there is internet access and can maintain operations even during unexpected challenges or natural disasters. The cloud offers real-time monitoring and data encryption, offering practices access to secure patient data 24/7.

The future of healthcare is faster, data-informed care with greater access for everyone.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

It started with this vision of what we call the connected office: a provider’s office that seamlessly connects to the broad healthcare ecosystem. We wanted to create something that could address every aspect of the healthcare experience with technology. Then we expanded to patients and to the broader system of hospitals. But the idea of a digitized healthcare ecosystem was the starting point.

eClinicalWorks connects to a broader ecosystem of hospitals, labs, and pharmacies, to help patients to experience faster and easier healthcare. We knew this would have a direct impact on people’s lives, and it definitely has. It started by coincidence when I observed my sister’s practice and matured into a mission-driven business. Today, it’s about serving the worldwide healthcare community and deploying digital systems that create positive outcomes. That’s now become our everlasting mission.

How do you think this might change the world?

There are over 2 million New Yorkers whose doctors use eClinicalWorks. In a New York Department of Health study on health outcomes, they found that because of proactive patient monitoring, patients showed improved blood pressure readings, smoking cessation success, and quicker depression screenings. And we’re not talking about one patient, we’re talking about millions of patients in one city experiencing these positive outcomes. With this technology, New York City can track disease outbreaks and notify providers for timely and accurate care. This is an example that can be scaled nationwide.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

I don’t see drawbacks. We’ve built a very clear guidepost on what we do and what we don’t do. That’s applicable to almost any business: if you end up having a clear purpose and mission, it will far surpass your return on investment.

At eClinicalWorks, we do work that focuses on serving the community and enhancing healthcare. Physicians and patients are our priority because they’re our customers, and we believe in serving them first. That’s the moral high ground that you need to have and that’s what we’re all about.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”?

• First, start with an idea for a company or product that has broad social appeal. The driving force needs to be about building technology that makes a difference and technology that people love to use. Profits will follow if you do a good job with this first step.
• Second, build your shareholder or stakeholder principles and focus on social causes over shareholder return. Shareholder value is not driving the value proposition for eClinicalWorks. We focus on improving healthcare, a social cause, which is helping us build a very successful company.
• Third, take care of your employees, which applies to any successful company. This means treating them as colleagues and encouraging everyone to work as a team player. When you go into meetings, people should leave their entitlements at the door and come prepared to be collaborative and communicative. Allow for mistakes and move forward, learning from them in the process.
• Fourth, it’s imperative to have a clear mission and code of conduct. Every employee should embrace your product or solution, preaching it, teaching it, and coaching it so that it becomes part of your company’s immersive DNA. If you talk to most, if not all, people who work at eClinicalWorks, they will tell you that we are in the mission of improving healthcare.
• Fifth, feel passionate about the technology you’re creating. Remember that passion when you wake up every morning and re-energize yourself. Use it as a reminder that what you’re doing is bigger than you or any one individual.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

Why wouldn’t you? Without technology, somebody could have lost their life or that of a loved one. When you realize the impact technology can have on a person’s daily life and how it’s making a big difference — nothing is more fulfilling. Love what you do and do what you love.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

I’d like to have lunch with Warren Buffett and find out how he’s still so passionate about his work at the age of 92.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Follow eClinicalWorks’ Facebook and Twitter pages because whatever the company does is what I do, we’re aligned as one.

https://www.facebook.com/eClinicalWorks/

@eClinicalWorks

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.