From Healthcare Vision to Scalable Software With a Trusted Technical Partner

[0:00] So it’s been a great relationship. I love working with Technology Rivers, not just Ghazenfer but the entire team. Collectively, it’s been great. This has really impacted our business and been a huge unlock for our business.

[0:10] My name is Patrick Mish. I’m the CEO and co-founder at SilverStay. SilverStay is a company that helps hospital systems unlock bed capacity by improving their throughput, moving tough patients out of the hospital faster. We are a ten-year-old startup, and we have engaged with Technology Rivers on three or four major development efforts over the past, I’d say, eight years or so.

[0:27] Ghazenfer and I got to know one another through a CEO network called MindShare, and very quickly hit it off and worked on a project to develop a database of post-acute care providers that our team could use in the placement of really complex patients.

[0:50] There was some significant back-end search capability that we needed that was really unique and challenging to work through. Ghazenfer and his team did a great job pulling that together. This predated the AI wave, and so we did a lot of work with Elasticsearch, trying to allow our team to search in a natural language processing way. It sort of predated the AI work.

[1:13] So we went off and did our thing for a handful of years, iterated on our product, and then came back to Technology Rivers within the past, I would say, six months, maybe a little sooner than that, to help with the development of a web application that’s going to be used by frontline case managers in hospital systems.

[1:32] That web application will pull data from the EMR, process that data on large language models, and then produce output that the case managers can operationalize really, really easily. So it helps save a bunch of administrative time for case managers.

[1:32] Technology Rivers has been working on the project and doing great work around helping us properly scope that project and helping to keep us moving in very quick sprints so that we’re getting to outcomes that are very defined on the software development front and not sort of splintering out into a lot of different directions and burning through a lot of cash in the process. Ghazenfer and his team have great technical expertise and guidance, and ultimately they’re delivering week over week. My team has been thrilled with the work that has been underway.

[2:16] As a founder without a software development background, most importantly, I do not bring—and my co-founder doesn’t bring—a software development background.

[2:24] It was important for us because we could articulate our vision for what we wanted to do, and then there were the practical realities of how we go do that. I think this is where Ghazenfer, together with his team, really helped us to say, “Okay, here’s how we need to think about laying out the architecture for this. Where are you trying to go big picture? Let’s not pigeonhole ourselves early in the process here. Let’s make sure that we can grow into whatever that user base is going to look like.”

[2:49] We know healthcare well, but not software development. And so Ghazenfer is a very trusted resource as well. He’s been helpful in just being able to sit down and have a technical conversation with, “Hey, here’s what we’re thinking. What do you think about this? Are we moving in the right direction with this? Here’s what we’re hearing from the customer. How do we address this? How do we answer it?” So, to a really nice extent, I would say there’s some mentorship for non-technical, as in coding-skill, founders. That’s really, really, really helpful.

[3:13] It’s an affordable engagement as well. So for a startup, it’s very helpful to not blow through hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend on a dev effort. And that ties really nicely into discipline in the development process as well, where the team is not going off in unwanted directions and sometimes helps us from going off in a bunch of different directions and says, “Okay, we need to get to these milestones.”

[3:27] So they’re bringing some really good product discipline, and along with that comes some great budget discipline.

[3:44] The other side of this that we love about Technology Rivers is, of course, working in healthcare, HIPAA is a huge part of the equation that needs to be solved for effectively. Trying to bolt on user credentials and password resets, how data should be stored, and all of the nuanced details of running a HIPAA-compliant web application need to be well thought out ahead of time.

[4:01] You don’t have to have every nuanced detail nailed, but you need to be thinking about how we’re going to make sure that we’re able to put this into a process that’s going to be HIPAA compliant as you’re out operationalizing this. And I think that’s been really, really helpful from our standpoint with Technology Rivers.

[4:24] In a healthcare environment, we know what we need to set up as some of that core infrastructure to make sure you’re going to be able to operationalize this in a way that’s going to be consistent with HIPAA guidelines.

[4:32] You’ve got to have a user interface that the customer wants to use, that they like to use, and that they’re comfortable using.

[4:41] And in many regards, maybe that’s the hardest part of this. If you can’t get the customer to use it, then the product is pretty much worthless, as cool as it might be. So we’ve spent a lot of time with the Technology Rivers team to get the user interface of this product nailed.

[4:58] Our case managers are constantly giving us feedback, and Technology Rivers helps us sift through that feedback and operationalize it in the UI and UX so that case management has a great experience. The team that’s using the product right now in the field is loving it. We’ve got some early beta users and great feedback and a lot of engagement from the frontline.

[5:15] That’s what we need. That’s what we expect. And Technology Rivers has delivered on that.

[5:22] Along the way, Ghazenfer has been super, super generous with introductions to people in his network as well. Sometimes that’s been venture-capital-related folks, potential investors, other technical folks who have been helpful to work with, and other advisors. Ghazenfer wants to be a collaborator and be helpful and bring resources to the table that are beyond just the software development side of things. And that’s something we really, really value.

[5:48] The other part about Technology Rivers that I’m really, really fond of is Ghazenfer’s willingness to introduce you into his network. When we were on the search for a fractional CTO, I hit up Ghazenfer and said, “Hey, who do you know? Who do you suggest?”

[6:01] And he had a great recommendation for us. Immediately, when we talked to this person, we loved him, and we ended up hiring him as our fractional CTO. It really helped us avoid a very extensive, lengthy process of interviewing a ton of different people. There’s a massive number of fractional CTOs out there, and knowing that Ghazenfer had given him the stamp of approval made a big deal and made it a lot easier for us to get to a decision point.

[6:23] That’s some of the added value that Technology Rivers brings that’s beyond just the great software development.

[6:34] So it’s been a great relationship. I love working with Technology Rivers, not just Ghazenfer but the entire team. Collectively, it’s been great. This has really impacted our business and been a huge unlock for our business.

[6:44] Within the past six to eight months, as our customers have been really pulling out of us a desire for really strong AI-related tools that can give them data and insight, but then also perform somewhat of the execution layer, some of the administrative execution layer, the products that Technology Rivers is working on for us are delivering on a lot of this demand that’s in the market right now in case management and throughput in these hospital systems.

[7:10] The other part about Technology Rivers that I’m really, really fond of is Ghazenfer’s willingness to introduce you into his network and set you up with some of his other trusted resources. When we were on the search for a fractional CTO—I don’t know, this was maybe eight or ten months ago—I hit up Ghazenfer and said, “Hey, who do you know? Who do you suggest?” Amongst many other people I hit up.

[7:37] And he had a great recommendation for us. Immediately, when we talked to this person, we loved him, and we ended up hiring him as our fractional CTO. It really helped us avoid a very extensive, lengthy process of interviewing a ton of different people. There’s a massive number of fractional CTOs out there, and knowing that Ghazenfer had given him the stamp of approval made a big deal and made it a lot easier for us to get to a decision point in that case.

[8:03] So that’s some of the added value that Technology Rivers brings that’s beyond just the great software development.

[8:17] In addition to the great thinking about HIPAA and the back-end piece of this, and how all this is going to integrate so that it’s an enterprise-scalable web application and software solution, you’ve got to have a user interface that the customer wants to use, that they like to use, and that they’re comfortable using.

[8:41] And in many regards, maybe that’s the hardest part of this. If you can’t get the customer to use it, then the product is pretty much worthless, as cool as it might be. So we’ve spent a lot of time with the Technology Rivers team to get the user interface of this product nailed.

[9:02] Our case managers are constantly giving us feedback. Some of it’s really, really good feedback. Some of it is kind of nuanced and maybe not things we want to do, but Technology Rivers helps us sift through that feedback and then operationalize it in the UI and UX so that case management has a great experience. The team that’s using the product right now in the field is loving it. We’ve got some early beta users.

[9:28] And we’ve got great feedback and a lot of engagement from the frontline. That’s what we need. That’s what we expect. And Technology Rivers has delivered on that.