Avado after 3 weeks

Periodically I send an update to various friends of Avado. If you'd like to be added to that list, just email me at dchase at avado dot com. From time to time I'll share some of those updates here. After just a few weeks in the market (i.e., since we opened up our beta), it's been incredibly gratifying the response we've gotten. In a startup, you have a hypothesis that you build your product vision around and then test that hypothesis. Seasoned entrepreneurs will tell you that you've hit it out of the park if 50% of your hypotheses prove correct. Naturally, the successful company is the one who can both anticipate and respond to customer desires. Indications are very positive for Avado. So without further ado, here's my most recent update.

Apparently things haven't shut down for the holidays yet. Avado had a great week so I thought I'd share some quick updates with my industry friends. Drop me a line if you'd like more detail than the bullets below including the quote in the subject line:

• Organic Medicine Now runs a low overhead (no administrative staff) Direct Primary Care practice in South Carolina. They proved the hypothesis that a practice can get up and running in a matter of days with the full Avado system and invite in patients. Within two days of the "virtual handshake" invitations going out, they had well over 100 patients signed up (here's his blog post on working with Avado). This easy on-boarding process is a stark contrast to what I've seen in typical HealthIT implementations. This even though we aren't where we'd like to be in terms of product documentation, training, etc. Pretty soon, Dr. Koniver is going to shut his bricks & mortar clinic and have a completely mobile clinic out of a refurbished ambulance that will do house/workplace calls. 
• MedLion agreement formalized. AKA "The Most Important Organization in Silicon Valley No One Has Heard About" they are one of the most successful disruptive innovators. We are thrilled to have Dr. Qamar and his rapidly growing network of practices on board. While early in the game, their vision of 1000 MedLion doctors is becoming very achievable given the incredible response they have been receiving both from frustrated primary care physicians looking for a better practice model as well as the investment community that wants to support disruptive innovators such as MedLion.
• Seattle Spine & Sports Medicine: We have our first working iPhone app and have submitted it to the App Store. Dr. Seroussi believes the symptom tracking app is a patient engagement "game changer" that will attract in many doctors as well as pharma and device companies (as Avado partners). Seattle Spine hosted an event this week with their network of allied health professionals (PTs, chiros, LMTs, etc.) and they had very kind words to say about us. We already have some of their "network" asking us about Avado. 
• Northwest DEMO: We were one of the 6 selected firms to demo at this MIT event. We got some great feedback and even a couple leads out of this already.
• We got a nice email from one of the top 3 MBA programs in the country. Like many MBA programs, they have teams of students do class projects with corporations. Most of these are with large corporations but they have "students choice" where they pick an emerging company. Apparently, Avado is the company they are most excited about so we're working with them to define a project for the 6 MBA students that will be assigned to us for several months. For a company having spent $0 on marketing and 3 weeks into the market, it's nice to get this kind of reception.
• Inbound Marketing already working. We are getting a steady stream of interest from various industry players. Here's a couple examples from this week (if you want other examples, let me know)
• Disease management & wellness company: They heard about Avado's patient engagement tools and wanted to see how it could work for programs such as their diabetes management program they sell to employers. We had a great call and are now doing a deep dive with them to ensure we're a good fit.
• One of the largest private healthcare providers in the country: I followed up on a lead a guy with a gmail address filled out on our website. It turns out he works in the Office of the CEO as an internal consultant for this org and wants our patient engagement tools for their large number of employed MDs (and also the independent MDs that practice at their hospitals). By the end of our call/demo, he was saying "this is phenomenal" and more I can share if you'd like more detail. This is all very early and we can't get too excited nonetheless, it's nice when a market leader is calling us. As a side note, he was very intrigued by our easy-to-setup websites that we have said can be setup in under an hour and then are easy to update. It had been awhile since I played with that feature so I put that to the test. He had given me a link to one of their practice websites. Even while jotting down usability improvement notes (there's some areas we can improve), I had the site up and running including the account setup process in under 20 minutes with staff profiles, etc. Given that we're offering these websites for free as part of our "freemium" business model, it will be interesting to see if many practices take advantage since many have their HealthGrades profile as their quasi website.

We appreciate your continued support. How can you help? More than anything, we want referrals to customers who value the Collaborative Care approach that our Patient Relationship Management system (what customers tend to call "patient engagement") enables. At this stage of our rollout, we look at these early customers as a partner so having the patient-centric organizations is key (frankly, the billing code-centric practices have a harder time understanding our value-proposition). These forward-looking providers recognize that in most cases, it's the patient who is the most important member of their care team since they are there 100% of the time and their time at the provider is well under 1% of their life. I can't recall selling a product where the reaction I get can only be described as giddy. I love how it gets their juices flowing and they have ideas for how Avado can work for them we hadn't even thought of. Fortunately, our system is flexible enough to support these scenarios. The good news for Avado is the HealthIT terrain has mostly been a desert and Avado is an oasis that is a breath of fresh air. We welcome your referrals to prospective customers/partners.