Patient Communicator
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Patient Communicator was a digital health startup whose product combined a patient portal, a CRM for doctors and a practice management system, moving patient access to doctors from phone calls to the web. Founder Jeff Novich originally built it in 2009 for his father, a primary care doctor, whose practice was transformed by it. In 2012 the company joined the first class of the Blueprint Health incubator with co-founder Larry Cobrin to commercialize the product for the broader market.
02 / Patient Communicator FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Patient Communicator failed because almost no customers wanted what it was selling. Founder Jeff Novich's post-mortem lists the causes: the product had been built for one specific practice and was never validated against broader market need; typical doctors' offices operate as an impenetrable 'black box' that resists workflow change; doctors are technology laggards who prefer acquiring new patients over running an efficient office; patient portals were already commoditized by EMR vendors; the market was crowded; doctors were nearly impossible to reach as buyers; and after months of rejection the founders lost passion. Three months of sales produced one paying doctor, and three more months of fundraising with 40+ investors produced nothing.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Patient Communicator is founded in New York (growing out of a patient-portal product Jeff Novich built for his father's primary care practice in 2009), raising a $20K seed round.
- Incubator
Novich and co-founder Larry Cobrin join the first class of the Blueprint Health healthcare incubator to commercialize the product.
- Shutdown
After three months of sales efforts yielding one paying doctor and three months of fundraising with over 40 investors yielding nothing, the founders shut the company down.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
In early 2012 Patient Communicator entered the Blueprint Health incubator and spent three months trying to sell the product, landing a single paying doctor (who later went out of business) and a handshake partnership with a small EMR.
- 02
The founders then spent three more months pitching over 40 investors without closing a round.
- 03
With no customers and no funding, the founders wound the company down in 2012; the post-mortem was published in January 2013.