Powerful.... Intuitive.... Easy to implement.... High Quality....Flexible.... Economical....

These probably aren't things that come to mind when you think of healthcare software. Our mission is to change that. Our primary mission is to build all of these qualities into our software solutions. 

Most people who have managed, administered, or used healthcare software have been frustrated by the gratuitous complexity and poor quality that comes with an outrageous price tag. It doesn't have to be this way. We succeed where others fail because we're a new kind of healthcare software company.  We consistently use sound engineering principles not only to create software, but to diagnose problems and find solutions. Our first instinct in solving a problem isn't to throw money at it. 

We use technology to solve problems, not to automate existing ones.

• High quality engineering and design is our first priority
  We are first and foremost a technology company, and proud of it. Few healthcare software companies will make this claim. They proclaim that they are healthcare companies first, technology companies second. Amazingly, at some companies, it is even a subject of debate at the executive level whether the core competency of the company is technology at all. If you go to the web sites of the larger companies and check the pages detailing the background of their senior executives you'll see why. You'll find lots of business analysts, accountants, a smattering of healthcare professionals, some lawyers, and almost no one with an engineering background. 

• Vision-driven, top-down, engineering methodology
  We use rigorous analytical methods to develop abstract, streamlined models that best leverage affordable technology to implement desired workflows, while maximizing efficiency and ease-of-use. Our software is then developed using generalizations of these models in order to promote a wide scope of functionality and customizability. This is exactly the opposite of how most healthcare software companies develop software. They present developers with a shopping list of dubious quality consisting of hundreds of items and and a deadline that makes it impossible to create an elegant, unified design. We see the forest and work down to the trees, while most healthcare software companies see only trees.

• We find synergies, not conflict, between technology and healthcare experts.
  Of course, this is much easier said than done. It is a fact of life that technical people and healthcare people tend to approach things very differently and think differently. Technical people are usually more comfortable with strategic thinking, while healthcare people are usually more comfortable with tactical thinking. This makes productive communication very difficult. The common outcome is that technology is used not to solve problems, but to automate existing ones. We believe the best way to handle this diversity is to have people with a foot in both camps: software developers steeped in real-world healthcare workflow modeling, and physicians and other healthcare professionals who are avid technology enthusiasts. When you get these type of people together, the excitement is almost palpable as ideas interact and build on one another. These people are not easy to find, but it's amazing how few people are needed when interactions are synergistic and mutually reinforcing instead of destructive.

• We're lean (on many levels) and our prices reflect it
  You may be tempted to believe that it takes an army of people to produce healthcare software, and another army to install it. For many healthcare software companies, a favorite technique for solving a problem is to simply throw money and resources at it. It's easy for them to do this. They've already trained you to accept that healthcare software costs a fortune, and, in the final analysis, you're the one footing the bill. And you haven't had any low cost alternatives. Of course, it is possible to develop, sell, and install healthcare software without armies of people, but it's not easy. Several interlocking strategies are required:

  • Elite people. This is the most important element, and is especially critical in software development. It's well established that a single elite developer can outperform a team of twenty mediocre ones. In a case of being penny-wise and pound-foolish, most healthcare software companies prefer to hire recent college graduates and others with minimal software development experience because they come cheap and don't ask uncomfortable questions (and can be easily slapped down on the off-chance they do). These companies avoid, and make no serious effort to retain, heavy-hitter type talent.

  • Collaborative synergies. This was alluded to above. It's extremely important that people collaborate in a productive and not a frictional way. There's no magic formula for this, but the best environment for it is having high quality people from different areas but with lots of common ground working within an achievement oriented, can-do culture.

  • Lightweight software development methodologies. Most healthcare software companies need to use bulky formal method to keep projects organized because they employ sharp divisions of labor and large teams.  Using these methods, a project becomes heavily front-loaded with all kinds of documentation before any coding begins, and changes require a stream of documentation. When properly implemented (which is a challenge), these methods can indeed keep things organized, but at a high cost. They slow down development tremendously, and the project becomes highly inflexible once things get underway because change becomes onerously burdensome. This has a chilling effect on innovation and leads to lower quality software: the project is essentially held hostage by the early documentation, even though much higher quality ideas and feedback are generated once the project is well underway. New kinds of software development methodologies, collectively termed lightweight or agile methodologies have received much attention lately. While there are several variants of these methods, what they tend to have in common is an iterative approach emphasizing continual improvement, rather than setting a target early on and continuing to shoot for it even when it becomes clear that the target is inappropriate. Solventus uses its own lightweight methodology to develop software, based on iterations from a well defined vision down to the details.

  • A unified architecture and framework. This has several distinct, and very large, advantages. A unified architecture as the basis of all of our products means that each individual application is much quicker and easier to develop because we start with a highly functional, mature base, rather than have to reinvent the wheel for each application. The application suite automatically has an entirely consistent look and feel, since it is based on much of the same framework. The total code base that we have to manage is smaller and streamlined, greatly lowering our costs. Maintenance is easier, since an improvement or a fix in the framework automatically migrates to all of our products. Last, but certainly not least, it minimizes the bane of most large, enterprise-class healthcare installations: the need to have interfaces between products. Even when buying solutions from a single vendor, you are likely to get a suite of completely separate applications that may even have been acquired originally from several different vendors. Interfacing the applications is invariably time-consuming, tedious, and costly, and even when well-implemented issues of data latency and consistency persist. When products share a common framework and database, a transaction performed by one product is automatically and immediately available to the other products.

  • Low-cost, industry-standard hardware and software platform components.

  • An application service provider (ASP) hosted model of implementation. This idea started to become heavily promoted about 2 years ago but few companies have been able to effectively utilize it. This is unfortunate because the ASP model is a tremendously attractive and economic way of implementing healthcare software. This is a very important subject, and to learn more about this model, its benefits, and why the promise of this model has yet to be realized, click here.

  • A budget-oriented, streamlined sales model. Here's a dirty secret of the healthcare software industry: a typical company spends over two times as much on sales and marketing as they do on research and development. It's pretty amazing when you think about it: they spend over twice the money convincing you to buy their software as they do developing it. Because licensing fees alone for sales to small and medium sized enterprises frequently run into the high six figures in today's market, and deep into the seven or eight figures for large enterprises, the companies are highly motivated to go all out on the sales front. Of course, as customers, you're the ones ultimately paying for the lavish 1600 square foot conference booths and steak dinners. We do things very differently. Our fees are based on a subscription model, so there is no single point of major income booking (and, from the clients point of view, no single point of major cost). This model makes it impossible for us to use hyper-aggressive sales people looking for a big killing on commission, and who almost always feel compelled to make unrealistic promises. Because our subscription model lets you easily walk away if you're dissatisfied after the sale, we have no motivation to oversell. We're confident that you'll find our sales process laid-back, pleasant, and informative. You'll be dealing with knowledgeable industry professionals, not sales reps. And our prices will make those freebies feel awfully expensive. (But, feel free to take full advantage of them before deciding on us!)

• Aggressively innovative
  Although they'll never admit it, the internal culture of most healthcare software companies is heavily reactionary. They dread change, and will usually only make significant changes or improvements when forced to by market conditions or government regulations. After all, they're really quite busy just trying to fix the thousands of bugs in their current releases. Solventus' culture is one of aggressive innovation. We are constantly thinking about new ways where technology can improve workflow, and keep an ever vigilant eye on emerging technologies so that we can be early adopters if they should prove appropriate.