Health Tech: Jinesh Patel of UptimeHealth On How Their Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness
An Interview With David Leichner
Going back to my original theme, have a deep understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve
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 Jinesh Patel, Co-Founder & CEO of UptimeHealth.
Jinesh Patel is a seasoned entrepreneur and innovator, having founded two successful companies and holding several patents in the medical technology domain. As the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of UptimeHealth, Jinesh is at the forefront of revolutionizing the healthcare industry by introducing cutting-edge technology to automate medical device management. This pioneering work has not only transformed the way healthcare providers manage their equipment but has also earned him a coveted spot on the 2021 Forbes Next 1000 list.
Before his illustrious journey with UptimeHealth, Jinesh showcased his expertise in designing and inventing state-of-the-art medical devices. He further amplified his contributions to the medical field by serving as the Clinical Engineering Manager for the most extensive health system in Austin, TX. This role allowed him to delve deep into the intricacies of medical device management and compliance, solidifying his reputation in the industry.
In the current landscape of medical technology, Jinesh stands out as a luminary. He is widely recognized as the foremost expert in asset management technology and compliance automation, particularly within the outpatient and ambulatory sectors. His profound knowledge encompasses regulatory compliance, finance, and the latest best practices in medical equipment management.
Educationally, Jinesh boasts an impressive academic background. He holds an MBA, complemented by a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering, both from the prestigious Texas A&M University. His academic and professional achievements underscore his commitment to excellence and innovation in the healthcare sector.
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?
My childhood story is similar to many first-generation Americans. My family migrated to the U.S. in the early 1980s. My father was in residency in New Jersey, where my sister was born, and then we moved to Buffalo, New York for his fellowship. I was born there, and we moved to Friendswood, Texas when I was two. Growing up in Texas was fantastic. I had a neighborhood full of friends, played sports, and spent most of my time outdoors. I was always busy with various activities and you always found me outside doing something surrounded by a supportive community. The main difference between my upbringing and that of my friends was my father’s firm belief that I needed to be a doctor like him. While I enjoyed playing outside and hanging out with friends, my dad emphasized the importance of education and extracurricular activities to prepare me for med school. Although I didn’t end up pursuing medicine, his dedication to education instilled a lifelong curiosity and drive to learn. This balance of outdoor activities and a focus on academics shaped my character and set the foundation for my career.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
One of the most interesting stories from my career happened in my first job out of grad school. I was managing the Seton Healthcare clinical engineering department in Austin, Texas, and was placed in a management position with people much older than me reporting to me. My age was 23 and the average age of my team was mid 40s. This dynamic was initially challenging as I had to command and guide individuals who had far more experience. It was a humbling and learning experience, requiring me to earn their respect and demonstrate leadership skills despite my youth. The first thing I did was call a team meeting and admit that I knew less than everyone at the table. I asked each of them to write down the 10 things they need me to do as their manager to be successful. I aggregated all the answers and created a top ten list among everyone. I let them know that if . However, after overcoming the initial awkwardness of my strategy, my team realized that I was serious about holding up my end of the bargain and they started to as well. Our teamwork led to significant improvements, and I was asked to run a larger system in Florida at 26. Around the same time, my best friend came to me and asked if I wanted to start a company called TargetVision (now Longshot Cameras), which developed camera systems for those training long-distance shooting. After thinking about it, I ultimately decided to do something I had always dreamed of, starting a company. Needless to say, this was a wild career change and one that my parents were quite upset with. I went from a fully independent, contributing member of society to a kid who moved back home to save money to build something new with no real startup experience. I learned so much about leadership, innovation, and the importance of taking calculated risks. All of these lessons were instrumental in my leadership capabilities and styles that help me drive UptimeHealth. It is interesting to think both of those experiences played a big part in building a software company dedicated to managing medical equipment for the outpatient and ambulatory industry.
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?
Jim Bowles, he was the strategic director at Trimedx, where I got my first job. He has been a pivotal mentor in my career. When he first came into my office, I immediately saw his passion and knowledge. He had a deep understanding of the industry and genuinely cared about mentoring others who cared about the industry. After my first meeting with him, I asked him to be my mentor. And he agreed, which marked the beginning of a significant professional relationship. Jim has always been a source of guidance and support. He made me feel comfortable asking questions and learning, providing me with insights that shaped my career. When we first were negotiating a contract with GE for some new service arrangements, he showed me how to use the power of our organization’s size as well as the existing team’s capabilities to leverage the best possible contract for the department. It was the first time I saw how to put a lot of the priniciples and practices we learned about in school into play. This small, humorous moment set the tone for an open and trusting relationship where I felt encouraged to seek advice and grow professionally. It also showed me that asking for advice isn’t a terrible thing. He didn’t make me feel small or little for asking what many may have seen as simple questions, but instead took it as a serious moment to educate and support me through the learning curve. This experience made it possible for my curiosity and inquisitive nature to flourish and allow approach problems and topics with genuine curiosity.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote is, “In our pursuit of happiness, it’s a good idea to pause and just be happy.” This quote is a reminder to appreciate our progress and celebrate our achievements. Often, we chase the next milestone and forget to enjoy the journey. It’s important to take moments to reflect and be proud of what we’ve accomplished. For me, this quote emphasizes the need to balance ambition with contentment, ensuring that we don’t overlook the joys of our current successes while striving for future goals. It has taught me to celebrate small wins and maintain a positive outlook, which is essential for sustained motivation and happiness. Otherwise, you will always be in grind mode and will run out of steam quickly.
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 that have been crucial to my success are grit, belief in our mission, and being a team player.
Grit. This trait helped push us through tough times at UptimeHealth. The journey til today was filled with 4 to 5 years of struggle. As an example, many businesses were impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak, and we were no exception. We first built UptimeHealth forces on selling to urgent cares and surgical centers. We had some great early traction and even were able to raise some money because we had very large prospects requesting pilots from us. We raised our Seed round in 2019 and launched our MVP around November. We started getting clients and signing groups up and then everything came to a halt as urgent cares and surgical centers became overwhelmed. After struggling to find footing, parting ways with an early CoFounder, and even having to deal with my mother passing away in 2020 alone, we still pushed on. No matter what was thrown at us, we just wouldn’t give up. Our perseverance and determination helped us find the dental industry as the best market to pivot into with our solution. Without knowing anything about the market, the players, the buyers, we dedicated ourselves to just learning and figuring it out as we went. We ended up finding a solid footing to grow on and now we are in a strong position in our field and well known throughout the dental industry.
Belief in our mission. My co-founder and I stopped pursuing of our traditional careers to solve a problem. And our dedication to solving the equipment management issues in outpatient healthcare, and our unwavering commitment to this mission helped us push through tough times and guide our north star when faced with major decisions. A good example is that we recently were asked to partner with the College of Biomedical Equipment Technology to help build the first accredited dental equipment repair technician school in the United States. Although starting a school does not seem like something a software company would do, we realized our mission was to solve the equipment management problem in healthcare, and more specifically dental equipment with our new focus. Part of the issue the industry is facing is a severe shortage of technicians in the labor market to support the equipment in dental practices. We believe that working with and supporting the school is immensely important to achieving our overall the overall objective we out to accomplish. We ended up finding many synergies throughout the process where we could find 1+1=3 moment. If we didn’t care more about the mission than the business, we would have never entertained this idea and would have missed out on this powerful partnership.
Be a team player. When you build a company, if it only takes or requires just one person to build it, it’s probably not that exciting or is destined to struggle when it comes time to scale. Knowing ahead of time that you are operating as part of a team and acting as a player-coach to accomplish your mission puts things in a different perspective than seeing yourself as the coach of a team. You immediately realize the importance of hiring correctly to surround yourself with the right team members as they will be in the trenches with you. You also never assume anything is below your pay grade and your team will see that as the culture you are trying to set. Overtime, as is the case at UptimeHealth, your culture will easily perpetuate throughout the organization making scaling and expectation setting much easier as everyone has been on the same page from the get-go as to what we are trying to build and how we are trying to do it.
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?
UptimeHealth aims to solve the problem of access to care by focusing on the equipment and instruments used in healthcare settings. Healthcare is a combination of a patient, a provider, and the required instruments needed to provide and support the care. While others tend to focus on patient and provider workflow management, our company is aiming to solve the problem of healthcare equipment management and its workflow. Specifically, we are building tools to help the outpatient, ambulatory, and in-home care settings. Not only are these the fastest growing segment in healthcare, but operators in these settings know less and less about how to take care of their equipment as they are usually thinly staffed and do not have a biomedical technician or engineer on staff.
How do you think your technology can address this?
Our technology provides a comprehensive equipment management solution. We help healthcare providers catalog their equipment, learn the best practice maintenance schedules, and connect with service technicians in their times of need. As users engage with our software, our platform collects the data, tracks equipment performance, predicts failures, and recommends devices for future replacements. Better maintenance policies and dispositioning of potentially problematic machines minimize the number of unplanned down events or disruptions a healthcare provider will face, thereby ensuring that equipment is always ready for use when a patient is expecting care.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
As a biomedical engineer managing clinical engineering departments, I saw firsthand the importance of equipment management in providing quality patient care. When we were in the process of acquiring outpatient clinics and urgent care centers, I was sent to audit the facilities. During those visits, I realized many didn’t know how to maintain their equipment properly. As someone who consumes their care in those types of buildings, I was worried about whether the machines used to take care of me were calibrated or reporting their results accurately. After searching far and wide to find a technology to help these locations, I realized that none existed. Most products on the market were tailored for technicians and engineers like myself to manage equipment. There wasn’t a product purpose-built for the smaller healthcare providers that needed the power users to be office managers and assistants. This inspired me to create a tool to ensure that equipment is properly maintained and calibrated. I wanted to create a system that not only manages equipment but also educates healthcare providers on best practices, ensuring that all patients receive the highest standard of care.
How do you think this might change the world?
Our technology has the potential to change how we think about equipment’s role in healthcare. As I mentioned before, there has been a hyperfixation of software solutions that focus only on the patient or provider variables, and not many on the third variable, equipment. If we can show the industry that we can be successful and shine a light on the need for technology focusing on the equipment management space, we can feel comfortable that progress and innovations are being made across all components of healthcare delivery.
As for our product specifically, we have a very unique data set of equipment performance and failure history in the outpatient and ambulatory markets. Our data can help improve equipment maintenance, reduce lead times for new devices, and provide valuable insights to manufacturers, ultimately benefiting the entire healthcare industry. By optimizing the feedback loop between equipment performance and demand back to the manufacturer, we can contribute to a more efficient and effective healthcare system globally.
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?
One potential drawback of our technology is the risk of over-reliance on software to manage everything and belief in its ability to be all-knowing. Users need to understand that the product and the suggestions are only as good as the data provided to the system. Our clients still need to take ownership of the equipment they own, the data they provide to the system, and document things to the best of their ability to get the best results and suggestions from our system. Otherwise, our suggestion may be unreliable and you may act upon it. This not only may not best serve the users, but it confirms the poor suggestion as accurate which may further hurt your future suggestions.
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”?
1 . Going back to my original theme, have a deep understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve: Most any problem worth solving has a social impact layer within. At UptimeHealth, we are building an asset management tool that is connected to a marketplace of service technicians. Helps people in hard-to-reach areas find the support they need, increasing access to care. We identify the areas that are least supported from a technician’s standpoint and emphasize the need for supply in those regions. Not only will this help new technicians find a good market to build their business in, it will also support a community that needs the help.
2 . User-Centered Design: Prioritize the user experience in your design process. Make sure the technology is intuitive, accessible, and meets the users’ needs. At UptimeHealth, we have the complete spectrum of users. We serve people who are extremely tech-savvy and others who are still struggling to use it effectively. This approach helped UptimeHealth create a platform that is easy for healthcare providers to adopt and use effectively as we are trying to build a successful outcome for everyone who touches our product. Without adoption, you will not succeed, never making the impact you desired.
3 . Scalability and Flexibility: Build your technology to scale and adapt to various environments. This ensures longevity and relevance as user needs and industry standards evolve. Our CoFounder & CTO, Bill Olsen was extremely diligent in ensuring the technology stack we built upon was a scalable platform that that can accommodate the needs of both small clinics and large hospital networks. Not only does this allow you to build in a way that makes the biggest impact in the market, but it also supports your journey as a new company in the market. As you build, you will never fully know your perfect end-user or client base. Building for scale and flexibility early allows you to pivot markets and client types without having to worry as much. This was extremely helpful to UptimeHealth as we were able to support our pivot from a technology perspective without having to redo our roadmap.
4 . Data-Driven Decisions: Utilize data to drive improvements and make informed decisions. Data analytics can help predict future needs and optimize performance. At UptimeHealth, we use data to drive the best decisions and where we focus our energies. It’s easy to get caught up in emotional decision-making as to where and why you want to do something or spend resources in a certain direction. However, letting the data speak and guide you will reduce any biases that may be built into an emotionally driven process. At UptimeHealth, when we acquired DentalWhale, we used the data about how our company would look and perform with and without the business. There were people on both sides of the fence when we looked at the company. Some thought it would be a good buy, others thought it would be too distracting or potentially not a good idea. Once we worked through our assumptions and projections, and let the data tell the story, we ultimately moved forward and everyone was quite happy with the outcome. It’s the easiest way to make big decisions and allows everyone, including initial detractors to believe in the ultimate decisions.
5 . Collaboration and Partnerships: Foster strong relationships with all stakeholders to drive innovation and growth. Creating a community within the industry you’re serving to support and build with you will increase your chances of success. UptimeHealth is building a partnership-oriented sales channel to help scale our business. This strategy has not only allowed us to grow faster, decreasing our customer acquisition cost, but it increased our brand presence and impact in the industry.
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?
I think Mahatma Gandhi said it best: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” No one cares more about your problems than you do. Sometimes that means picking up a pen, a paper, a keyboard, or a hammer and fixing it yourself because you’re the one who cares the most. Otherwise, all you do is sit and complain about why someone else hasn’t solved it. Taking that extra initiative not only helps solve the problem but also gives you insight into why it hasn’t been solved yet. All these learnings will guide you in your journey.
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 would love to have lunch with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not only do I enjoy geeking out about the cosmos and astronomy, but I also deeply respect his ability to take complex topics and explain them in a way that anyone can understand. His talent for simplifying some of the most complex aspects of science and making it accessible to a broad audience is something I really admire. You can’t drive change if people don’t understand what you’re trying to change, and effective, simple communication is key. Neil does this brilliantly, and I truly respect his intellect and communication skills.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Website: https://www.uptimehealth.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jineshjpatel/
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.
