Costa Mesa Startup Looks to Link Care Facilities
Two-year-old OneTouch Technologies LLC of Costa Mesa is trying to bring a bit of automation to nursing homes and other parts of the long-term healthcare industry.
“This company was established because of the lack of technology in bedside long-term care, home care and assisted living,” said Robert Davis, OneTouch’s president. “This industry is vacant (of technology).”
Many bids to link technology and healthcare have focused on getting systems into the hands of doctors or within hospital walls,with mixed results.
But Davis, who said he’s had experience selling to physicians, believes that selling technology to doctors and hospitals is “fraught with problems.”
Instead, OneTouch is going after the long-term care industry, which is expected to grow in importance as Americans live longer. OneTouch projects the long-term care market for its product to grow to $100 million per year during its first five years of rollout.
OneTouch provides wireless handheld computers, such as Palm devices, for nurses and nursing assistants at long-term care facilities. The devices link to microchips embedded in patient identification bands and caregiver nameplates.
The caregiver then uses the wireless computer and a wand to read the chips and record the pertinent patient information. After data’s collected, it can be sent to the nursing home’s network server.
OneTouch contends its system will reduce caregivers’ time required for administrative documentation and improve verification of patient care for regulatory agencies.
Established in July 1999, OneTouch has spent two years developing its system. The company raised $6 million in startup funding from private individual investors and is working on raising an additional $8 million to $12 million within the next 90 days, Davis said.
According to Davis, OneTouch has been talking to several national nursing home chains about its system. OneTouch’s introduction strategy includes developing pilot projects for large nursing home chains and working at a more grassroots level for smaller facilities.
OneTouch is planning to lease its system, Davis said. For a typical 100-bed skilled nursing facility, costs for hardware, software, training and support range from $2,000 to $4,000 a month, Davis said, depending on the level of training and support desired.
“We’re not asking them to buy it up front,” Davis said.
OneTouch isn’t planning to build a large sales force, Davis said. He said he’s hoping nurses who use the system will spread the word.
Morningside of Fullerton, a continuing care retirement complex with 300 units and 100 nursing home beds, is a test site for OneTouch’s system. ParkVista at Morningside, the complex’s skilled nursing facility, was introduced to OneTouch through a former employee, said Louis Koff, the facility’s administrator.
ParkVista was interested in the system as a way to ease patient data collection and make it more accurate, Koff said. Additionally, he said it’s allowed administrators to see what staff members are doing.
OneTouch counts 25 employees, including 14 here in Orange County. Besides Davis, the company’s executive ranks include chairman Thomas Kemp, former chief executive of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles and a former president of Beatrice/Hunt-Wesson Foods.
As for financial goals, Davis projects OneTouch to be “cash positive” about 18 months after its venture capital financing comes through. On going public, “the VCs think about it more than we do,” Davis said.
“We want to build a successful business. If things happen, they happen,” he said. n
