CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
The Healthcare CTO Who Kept Bringing Technology Rivers to His Next Project
“They are not just hired guns, but they become partners to the companies that they work with.”
Gorkem Sevinc (Healthcare CTO & Technology Entrepreneur, Former Co-Founder & CTO, emocha Health)
Gorkem Sevinc first worked with Technology Rivers through MileMarker, a startup originating from the Johns Hopkins Medicine Technology Innovation Center. That first engagement grew into a relationship spanning multiple healthcare companies, development teams, and introductions to other startups.
Hear Gorkem's Experience Working with Technology Rivers
As an experienced healthcare CTO and technology leader, Gorkem has worked with Technology Rivers in very different environments. In one, Technology Rivers effectively became the technology team. In another, it extended an established engineering organization that needed to move faster.
Gorkem shares why healthcare domain knowledge matters, what impressed him about the team’s technical adaptability and responsiveness, and why his experience led to a relationship that extended well beyond the first project.
Client
Gorkem Sevinc
Role
Healthcare CTO & Technology Entrepreneur; Former Co-Founder & CTO, emocha Health
Engagement
Multiple healthcare software development engagements
Industry
Healthcare Technology / Health IT / Digital Medicine
Focus
Healthcare software development, engineering team extension, scalability, HIPAA/HITECH, security and privacy
Why Gorkem Values Working with Technology Rivers
Technical Expertise He Could Trust
Coming from a deep technical background himself, Gorkem was able to evaluate Technology Rivers as an engineering team, not simply as a buyer of software services. He points to a strong baseline of technical expertise and says the products and tools delivered met and exceeded the quality he expected.
A Partner, Not “Hired Guns”
Gorkem doesn’t describe Technology Rivers as developers who simply receive requirements and execute tickets. In his experience, the team became a partner to the companies it worked with, taking the time to understand what the business and product were trying to accomplish.
Fits the Team You Have
Technology Rivers worked in two very different models for Gorkem. When MileMarker didn’t have a technology team, Technology Rivers became that team. When emocha already had engineers, Technology Rivers became an extension of the existing organization.
Learns and Adapts Fast
Gorkem was impressed by the team’s ability to work across different technology stacks. Even when Technology Rivers encountered something unfamiliar, he says the team would learn it “in record time.”
Always Feels Available
Gorkem initially had concerns about working with a service provider across different locations, schedules, and time zones. His experience was the opposite: questions, clarifications, meetings, holidays, and geography did not become barriers to getting work done.
“I don't know how they do it, but it almost feels like that team is working 24/7.”
Gorkem Sevinc
“Whenever I have a question or a clarification, we have meetings at various times, and it may be a holiday there, it may be a holiday here. It doesn’t matter.”
From Johns Hopkins Technology to a Startup
Where the Relationship Started
When the Technology Exists, But the Technology Team Doesn't
Gorkem first connected with Technology Rivers through MileMarker, a startup based on technology that had been developed at Johns Hopkins and licensed out to become its own company.
The technology existed, but the new company needed the resources to continue building it. The goal, as Gorkem describes it, was to extend the product into a scalable, supportable, and maintainable solution.
There was one fundamental challenge: the startup did not have a technology team in place.
Technology Rivers stepped into that gap.
Instead of simply taking responsibility for an isolated development project, the team provided the technical resources MileMarker needed to continue building the product.
For Gorkem, the description was simple: Technology Rivers became the technology team.
“We didn't have a technology team in place, and we needed technological resources to help us keep building the product. In that scenario, Technology Rivers became the technology team.”
Gorkem Sevinc
The Same Partner, a Completely Different Need
From Becoming the Technology Team to Extending One
The next engagement presented a very different challenge.
Based on his experience with MileMarker, Gorkem introduced Technology Rivers to emocha Health, where he was Co-Founder and CTO.
This time, Gorkem already had a technology team. What he needed was more capacity.
The company wanted to accelerate development and address projects that its local team could not get to. At the same time, Gorkem wanted to maintain the quality of the product while becoming more scalable.
Technology Rivers adapted to the new environment. Instead of acting as the technology team, it worked alongside Gorkem’s existing engineers as additional development capacity.
MileMarker
No technology team
Technology Rivers becomes the technology team.
emocha Health
Existing technology team
Technology Rivers extends the technology team.
The engagement model changed because the business need changed.
“We needed to go faster, continue to build the same quality of product, while being more scalable. Technology Rivers was able to become additions and extensions to my existing team.”
Gorkem Sevinc
More Than Checking Compliance Boxes
Healthcare Expertise Has to Go Beyond the Code
A large part of Gorkem’s career has involved health IT and building digital medicine solutions. That background shapes what he expects from a development partner.
Healthcare applications can involve protected health information, security and privacy requirements, HIPAA, HITECH, and other considerations that general software teams may not routinely encounter. But Gorkem makes an important distinction: knowing the terminology isn’t enough.
“There are a lot of basic principles that a team has to understand when building digital medicine solutions. That’s not just checking the boxes on HIPAA or HITECH but actually building solutions that are secure, private, and appropriately built.”
Gorkem says his work with Technology Rivers included HIPAA-compliant and HITECH-compliant applications that were not simply built to check compliance boxes, but were developed around best practices.
He also emphasizes understanding the healthcare business domain itself. When building something such as a mobile health application, the engineering team needs to understand how that technology fits the healthcare use case and the product being built.
Capabilities Reflected in Gorkem’s Experience
- ✓Healthcare software development
- ✓Health IT
- ✓Digital medicine
- ✓Mobile health
- ✓HIPAA considerations
- ✓HITECH considerations
- ✓Protected health information
- ✓Security and privacy
- ✓Scalable and maintainable software
“What I like about Technology Rivers is that they bring a lot of expertise to the table.”
Gorkem Sevinc
A Strong Foundation Across Technology Stacks
“Yes, But Help Us Understand.”
Different products and companies bring different technology requirements.
For Gorkem, Technology Rivers’ value was not limited to knowing one particular stack. He describes the team as having a baseline level of technical expertise that allowed it to work effectively with different technologies.
“Even if there’s a technology that they’re not familiar with, they will learn it in record time, which never ceases to amaze me.”
That adaptability led to one of Gorkem’s most memorable descriptions of the Technology Rivers mindset. He never heard “No.” Instead, he heard: “Yes, but help us understand.”
For a CTO working across different products and companies, that creates a different development relationship. The expectation isn’t that a development partner already knows every possible technology. It is that the team has enough technical depth, curiosity, and problem-solving ability to understand the challenge and move forward.
“I've never heard the answer ‘No.’ I've always heard, ‘Yes, but help us understand.’”
Gorkem Sevinc
“Even if there’s a technology that they’re not familiar with, they will learn it in record time, which never ceases to amaze me.”
Beyond a Single Project
A Relationship That Followed Him Across Companies
When a CTO Keeps Bringing the Same Team Back
Perhaps the strongest evidence in Gorkem’s story is not a single quote. It’s what he did after the first engagement.
Gorkem first worked with Technology Rivers through MileMarker. Based on that experience, he introduced Technology Rivers to emocha Health.
The relationship continued beyond those two companies. Over time, Gorkem introduced Technology Rivers to additional startups, including:
1
MileMarker
2
emocha Health
3
LearnNext
4
ReHAP
5
SilverStay
6
Novel Microdevices
The products, organizations, and development needs were not identical. But Gorkem kept bringing Technology Rivers into new conversations.
That is particularly meaningful coming from a technical leader. Introducing an engineering partner to another company means putting your own professional reputation behind that recommendation.
The relationships could also continue beyond Gorkem’s own involvement. He specifically notes that even after he was no longer involved with emocha, Technology Rivers continued working with the company.
An Experienced CTO Evaluating an Engineering Team
Why Gorkem's Perspective Matters
This Isn't Generic Praise From a Software Buyer
Gorkem has spent his career building technology. His background includes leadership within the Johns Hopkins Medicine Technology Innovation Center, serving as Co-Founder & CTO of emocha Health, and building healthcare and digital medicine products.
He was also named CTO of the Year at the 2017 Baltimore Innovation Awards.
That experience provides important context for what he chooses to praise about Technology Rivers: technical expertise, technology stacks, scalability and maintainability, product quality, healthcare domain knowledge, security and privacy, engineering capacity, adaptability, responsiveness, and execution.
These are the considerations of someone responsible for technology organizations and products. His endorsement wasn’t limited to saying the team did good work. He brought them into other companies.
When Distance Doesn’t Feel Like Distance
“It Almost Feels Like That Team Is Working 24/7.”
Working with a distributed development team can raise a practical concern:
Will the team actually be there when you need them?
Gorkem had his own unease about working with a service provider. What impressed him was how little time, geography, or differing schedules seemed to interfere with the work.
When he had a question or needed clarification, the team was responsive. Meetings happened at various times. Different holidays between locations did not change his perception that Technology Rivers was available when work needed to move forward.
“I don’t know how they do it, but it almost feels like that team is working 24/7.”
For Gorkem, availability wasn’t valuable simply for the sake of being available. It translated into execution.
“What I like about Technology Rivers is getting stuff done, and whatever it takes to get stuff done, they will do, no matter the time or location.”
The Strongest Endorsement Is What Happened Next
A Technical Partner Worth Bringing to the Next Company
Gorkem’s experience with Technology Rivers cannot be reduced to one project.
He saw Technology Rivers become the technology team when a startup needed one. He saw the same company operate as an extension of an established engineering team when the challenge changed. He worked with the team on healthcare products where technical decisions needed to account for security, privacy, compliance, and the realities of the healthcare domain. He saw engineers adapt to different technologies rather than hide behind the limitations of a particular stack. And he experienced a distributed team that felt remarkably available when something needed to get done.
But perhaps the strongest endorsement came afterward.
Gorkem kept introducing Technology Rivers to other companies.
What His Experience Demonstrates
Technical Depth
Engineering expertise that earned the confidence of an experienced CTO.
Healthcare Understanding
Development informed by the realities of health IT and digital medicine.
Team Flexibility
The ability to become the technology team or extend the one already in place.
Adaptability
A willingness to understand new technologies and learn quickly.
Responsiveness
A distributed team that Gorkem describes as feeling almost like it works 24/7.
Long-Term Trust
A relationship strong enough for Gorkem to bring Technology Rivers into additional companies.
“The way I see Technology Rivers is that they are not just hired guns, but they become partners to the companies that they work with.”
Gorkem Sevinc
Video Transcript
The Full Conversation
[0:00] Hi everybody, my name is Gorkem Sevinc, and I met Technology Rivers through one of those startups that I helped co-found, and that is AGMD, that’s Mile Marker.
[0:13] So Mile Marker is another technology that we had built at Johns Hopkins, and we had licensed it out to be its own startup company.
[0:21] And when we licensed it out, we needed a technology company to help us build the product and help us extend the product to be a scalable, supportable, and maintainable solution. Three years after the fact, we continue to work with Technology Rivers.
[0:38] We started using Technology Rivers to help us accelerate development, help us handle some of the projects that some of the local team could not get to, or it was basically extending the team, where Technology Rivers was able to help us contribute to delivering the products.
[0:58] And while I’m not involved in Emocha anymore, I know that Technology Rivers still continues to work to this day with Emocha as well.
[1:08] A lot of my background comes from health IT and building digital medicine solutions for healthcare. That involves a lot of compliance requirements.
[1:21] We have HIPAA, we have HITECH, sometimes we have even FDA requirements that apply to the products that we build in health IT, because we have to handle what we call protected health information appropriately.
[1:33] There are a lot of basic principles that a team has to understand when building digital medicine solutions.
[1:44] That’s not just checking the boxes on HIPAA or checking the boxes on HITECH, but actually building solutions that are secure and private and appropriately built.
[1:56] So what I’ve seen from Technology Rivers is that we were able to build a lot of HIPAA compliant and HITECH compliant applications that didn’t just check the boxes, but they were actually built for best practices.
[2:10] My nature of work with Technology Rivers has essentially been a lot on the healthcare, health IT, and digital medicine side.
[2:16] When you’re building those applications, you need to really understand not only the technical side, but the business domain as well, because you need to understand these idiosyncrasies of building healthcare solutions.
[2:32] But also, for example, if we’re building mobile health solutions, you need to have business understanding of the mobile health side and how does that apply to the product that is being built.
[2:42] So what I like about Technology Rivers is that they bring a lot of expertise to the table. So the way I see Technology Rivers is that they are not just hired guns, but they become partners to the companies that they work with.
[3:00] We licensed out a technology from Johns Hopkins, and we didn’t have a technology team in place, and we needed technological resources to come help us keep building the product. And in that scenario, Technology Rivers became the technology team.
[3:16] In another scenario at Emocha, what we did was that we had our own technology team, but we needed to supplement that team.
[3:25] We needed to go faster. We needed to continue to build the same quality of product while continuing to go faster and being more scalable. So Technology Rivers was able to become additions and extensions to my existing team.
[3:47] What I liked about Technology Rivers is that they are very, very honest.
[3:53] They are very, very good at the different technology stacks that you would throw at them. Because there is a baseline technology expertise that they already have.
[4:05] And even if, let’s assume that there is a technology that they’re not familiar with, they will learn it in record time, which just never ceases to amaze me.
[4:16] The main thing I like about Technology Rivers is that I’ve never heard the answer no. I’ve always heard, “Yes, but help us understand.” And always tools, products, everything has been delivered to the quality that I expected and exceeded.
[4:36] What I was very impressed with Technology Rivers is, I don’t know how they do it, but it almost feels like that team is working twenty-four seven, because whenever I have a question, whenever I have a clarification, we have meetings in various times, and it may be a holiday there, it may be a religious holiday, it may be a holiday here, it doesn’t matter.
[4:59] So what I like about Technology Rivers is it’s getting stuff done, and whatever it takes to get stuff done, they will do, no matter of time, location, etc.
[5:11] So that was my first unease with any service provider really, and I don’t think that applies in this situation.
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Fractional / Interim CTO & Technology Advisor
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