Box acquires MedXT

https://blog.box.com/2014/10/box-acquiring-medxt-to-modernize-collaboration-in-healthcare/

by mmayberry • 12 years ago

69 17 12 years ago

blog.box.com

ihnorton• 12 years ago

Interesting move, but: this, folks, is why hospitals buy from $BIGCORP (Epic, GE, Siemens).

edit: to clarify, by "this" I mean "stability". One path to build a medical software company has been to start by targeting individual practices, clinics, and small hospitals. That is still possible, and there are plenty of companies doing it. But that path is getting harder to take in the US because of medical industry consolidation. Even "independent" practices now usually have referring affiliations, and more often than not this means that they use the hospital network's existing software infrastructure.

incision• 12 years ago

Is it?

I have no solid idea, but my impression from glancing at solutions for healthcare years ago wasn't that Hospitals are choosing Big Co so much as they have little choice.

As I understand it, smaller companies don't try / give up on keeping up wit the costs of required certifications (possibly the wrong term) and the like.

This also seemed to help explain the slow pace of advances and updates to such systems as patches and changes have their own onerous process.

enraged_camel• 12 years ago

Yes. Three reasons:

1. Healthcare is heavily regulated. HIPAA is the most well-known law, but there are also countless local and state laws hospital systems must comply with.

2. Any new software needs to be sufficiently integrated with several existing systems and databases. What this means is that you can't just develop a stand-alone solution that deals with just one part of the process.

3. Many hospital staff are technophobic. Doctors especially.

I'm oversimplifying of course, but this is basically why incumbents (big co) are preferred. They have tons of domain expertise in healthcare, are deeply familiar with processes and requirements AND know plenty of people in the right places to grease the wheels when necessary. This makes it very difficult for startups to break into the industry.

seehafer• 12 years ago

To OP's original point, healthcare orgs tend to think in terms of 5 year chunks, at minimum, when planning. They figure that the likelihood of any small podunk startup being around in 5 years is minimal, so even if the product is 10x or better than the existing solution, there's that additional barrier to adoption.

redtrackker2• 12 years ago

Not really. It happens to be that most 'image viewing' tech like this is bundled with the hardware hospitals buy. Example: If you buy a GE/Fuji/etc PACS your usually stuck with their image viewer.

ageyfman3• 12 years ago

MedXT is not a viewer. It's an exchange product with a viewer. Large COs like GE (Siemens), Fuji, McKesson, are not even close to having the exchange capabilities like MedXT. It's a super strategic move for Box to buy them, Radiology is slowly moving into collaboration, and Box is now the largest vendor of collaborative Radiology.

jonknee• 12 years ago

I don't quite get what you're saying. If you had made the "risky" move here and used MedXT your solution will continue to work and will improve. You're still better off than with the clumsy desktop tools that you were using before.

Big companies do mergers all the time (including GE and Siemens selling off and buying business units). Change will always happen.

famousactress• 12 years ago

FWIW I'm not sure I agree that it's getting harder (though sure, consolidation is a challenge). That said, for the moment let's concede that it is and I'll argue that's fine.

Harder isn't a bad thing. For the last decade in healthcare we've had a small array of large players with strong footholds and really shitty projects, and a huge array of small players with small footholds and really shitty products.

Harder means you have to do a very good job to win, which will probably lower the noise floor among the $NOTBIGCORP crowd and may make that road for growth even more plausible for folks doing something really excellent.

pearjuice• 12 years ago

Can we please discuss this acquisition and its impact instead of a thread at the top - and several below - about the reference to the "incredible journey" and the acquainted Tumblr on the topic?

It's well known that anyone a bit into SV and its surroundings is aware of this "meme" and founders are often placing bets whether they will include it in their end-of-product-PR or not.

dang• 12 years ago

Url changed from https://www.medxt.com because this one contains a bit more information.

geoffc• 12 years ago

Congrats to the MedXT team they built a beautiful DICOM viewer and had a good cap structure which makes this a win/win for them and Box. Box now has an Saas offering into the most on-premise space in enterprise IT.

ageyfman3• 12 years ago

Nice, Geoff! The viewer is great.

rdw• 12 years ago

MedXT is YC 2013.

Congratulations to Reshma and Cody, they've been working extremely hard on producing a very impressive product.

chatmasta• 12 years ago

Congrats Cody and Reshma!

dkarapetyan• 12 years ago

Between gdrive and dropbox I don't understand how Box continues to exist.

Box acquires MedXT

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