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Built In Colorado is excited to announce February’s Startup of the Month: Aventura. Over the past six years software company Aventura hasn’t strayed too far from where they started: they launched out of Denver as a team of healthcare experts out to change the way doctors and nurses care for patients. And today they have grown to a team of about 50, still headquartered in Denver, that is providing software that matches the workflow of doctors as they move from patient to patient. Along the way, Aventura has raised over $20 million to keep the team doing just that.
Built In Colorado caught up with CEO John Gobron to hear about Aventura’s beginnings in the Denver Health IT department and its future as a healthcare tech leader:
In the beginning, how did you realize there was a need for Aventura in the market?
We were born in the Denver Health IT department after completing a desktop virtualization project, only to see nurses and doctors run the other way. We became a shadow, following the clinicians for months, carefully observing their actions with patients, computers and each other. We noted the choreography when the work was really flowing. And it noted the interruptions, the wasted motions, the waiting, and the tension when it wasn’t. So then we realized the need for a system that could deliver the correct information to doctors and nurses when they roamed from patient to patient throughout the hospital based on their specific needs.
Where did you envision the company going back when you started in 2008?
The team—which eventually became Aventura—attacked the problem in the hospital from the other end; the end that started with understanding how nurses and doctors actually work. With an understanding of how the whole system needed to work for the people who delivered the care, the Aventura team started building a universal architecture that reaches into all the layers, an architecture that included OS, virtual desktops, applications, policy and printers. We envisioned an architecture so unique that it made static components act like they’re one step ahead of doctors and nurses – and we made it.
What can other entrepreneurs in the Colorado area learn from you?
It’s important to remember that resilience and grit can be more significant than brilliance. Cultivating a team that feels they are contributing to the winning side and building something meaningful is the best predictor of success.
How is your team working to solve tough technology problems?
We’re a rowdy family of technology buffs passionate about bringing awareness computing to healthcare. Our staff-created values really speak to the team behind the mission: ‘We are in it together; we are improving the world around us; we give a hoot; our customers become part of our team; and we stop often for a good laugh and libation.’
We think a big part of our success is bringing awareness computing to healthcare comes from where we started. While other companies are struggling to adapt products that weren’t designed for healthcare, we started in a hospital and we never got distracted.
Where is Aventura headed this year?
2014 will be a growth and expansion year for Aventura. We are in the right place at the right time with respect to solving a thorny problem for our customers, which is the enablement and use of electronic medical records. As we move towards an EMR-centric healthcare ecosystem, patients, hospitals, insurers and researchers all benefit when healthcare is practiced using digitized records. However, for doctors and nurses, the very people who are providing and documenting patient care, the use of computers is often cumbersome and distractive to the patient-caregiver experience. We solve this problem by bringing speed, security and mobility to the point of care, and we are looking forward to helping many hospitals solve this problem in 2014 and beyond.
