One customer to unleash the flood

When it comes to enterprise software, it's always that first customer which is the toughest. Prove your claims once, and the world may beat a path to your door.

Open source can play that game, too.

The subject here is Medsphere. I've written about them before. Their OpenVista technology was originally developed at the VA. It's not only open source, it's public domain. Building a business on that would take a key customer.

That turned out to be the Midland Memorial Hospital, in West Texas. Medsphere vice president-sales and marketing Frank Pecaitis says they're a good mid-sized hospital, about 400 beds, and they had evaluated a number of proprietary offerings before going with Medsphere early in 2005.

Now they're up. "The satisfaction is high, and they keep using additional features," he reports. An Electronic Patient Record, which is at the center of the OpenVista system, touches everyone in the hospital. "There's over 30 individual software applications that use our electronic health record. They don't do a big bang – they start small and extend."

But in a way, an Electronic Patient Record is a Big Bang. With EPR technology in place, every department in a hospital suddenly has access to accurate patient records, and in time so do pharmacies and physicians serving that hospital. Money is saved, accuracy is assured, and (yes) lives are saved as well.

With Midland now happy, Pecaitis can also show Midland to other prospects. He figures there are potential contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars in his sales pipeline now. Part of their due diligence will be trooping out to West Texas. "We don't have corporate jets like the larger vendors. Our clients fly in on their own dime." Fortunately Southwest Airlines has served Midland for a generation.

Pecaitis says that among his prospects is a hospital in New Orleans. A flood may be about to begin.  This time a good one.