617 - Inside Olinqua's Integrated Platform and Smart Device Deployments at DHF26

Host: Hey, if you're interested in digital health but you're not sure where you fit, I made something that you should check out.

Peter Birch: I'm pretty excited about it too.

Host: It's the THT Digital Health Career Toolkit. It's a free five day email series designed to help you on your health tech career journey. There's lots of valuable insights in there, no matter what stage you're at. Head, uh, to TalkingHealth Tech Toolkit to get your free access.

Peter Birch: Welcome to the Talking Health Tech podcast. My name is Peter Birch. Today on the show, I'm talking to Martin Maczynski, CEO at Alinqua. Always good to chat, Martin. Great to have you here.

Martin Maczynski: Good to see you again.

Peter Birch: I say here, but I'm here in your booth, in your presence, showing, uh, off the work you do at Alinqua. For those unfamiliar with, uh, Alinqua, it's been a bit since we've spoken on the pod. There's been little short conversations out and about and events. So looking forward to diving in a bit more. But, um, uh, help frame it up. Tell us, uh, the problems you solve and what you do.

Martin Maczynski: Yeah, well, we've been busy. Um, I won't mention any names, uh, to protect the innocent and the guilty. But, um, but we've done two really large capital works projects here in Victoria. Um, I think overall we're doing about a dozen projects at any given time. And so, yeah, I don't know how the team does it, to be honest. It's just so flat out all the time.

Peter Birch: Yeah.

Martin Maczynski: But these ones, um, have been run and one, and I think we've got something like 2,000 handsets out there in the field with the app running on them and, you know, actually doing real stuff for real people in the nation's newest hospitals, which is pretty cool. Yeah.

Peter Birch: And so is that the main kind of handsets for, uh, in hospital settings, like, for those that didn't know Alinqua before this, like, how do you, how do you describe it to the brand new first?

Martin Maczynski: I think that's kind of the, um, it's almost like the aspirational target would be everyone's got a handset, everyone's got a smartphone, they've got data at their fingertips.

Peter Birch: Yeah,

Martin Maczynski: we're starting some. I mean there's still hospitals where we're delivering messaging to pages today.

Peter Birch: Yes.

Martin Maczynski: Um, we still sell occasionally pages like that today.

Host: Yeah.

Martin Maczynski: So there's a lot that goes into the decisions around it. Infrastructure maturity, um, where a hospital wants its return on benefits, what benefits they can roll out within the infrastructure, you know, that they're running. And then usually what happens is there's an on ramp somewhere along this continuum. Someone will come on. Um, the cool thing about a brand new redevelopment is usually the on ramp is the latest and greatest stuff, right? And that's across all systems. Um, but if you're looking at say for example a brownfields hospital where they're trying to figure out, well, where, where's my on ramp to get to there? And usually it's somewhere along the continuum. You know, it's like network refresh here, maybe building a new wing. Take that as an opportunity to uplift some systems. And it's usually quite a, um, progressive kind of few tactical architectures that lead you to the target one if I

Peter Birch: was to lean into. I mean I love this here at the booth. If you're listening on audio, it's worth watching the video. But the, make sure we share kind of the, you know, you got the pages right down here and how healthcare is done, uh, back in the olden days. But like you say, uh, there's a lot of health care that's done now. So there, one would ask then like the, if, if it does the job then like what, what benefit? Like any new technology requires investment. Like, but in, by, by not investing in new ways to do what the pager did, for example, like what are you foregoing? Like what's the point of like making that investment other than to be modern and to uh, do it in the way that healthcare's done now? Because you know, we, we. There's a lot of types of technology that exist in healthcare that it, they work. So don't break, don't, don't fix them 100%.

Martin Maczynski: Um, yeah, I'm never a tech for tech's sake kind of fan. Um, so I think that you would never actually roll out smartphones just to get your messages. You just wouldn't do it. Yeah, pages work fine. And the thing that's stopping pages from working fine now is the fact that you've got the license spectrum. It gets expensive, the infrastructure's aging and it's breaking and you can't buy spares for it. So I think we're sort of talking about the end of life of a generation of infrastructure. And some sites are replacing it with new paging infrastructure, other sites are rolling out smartphones on a clinical grade network for a variety of reasons. And those guys want to converge everything onto those devices.

Peter Birch: Yes.

Martin Maczynski: And so really it's, it's almost like um, being part of a bigger Picture and the bigger picture of things like bedside access to the EMR about the patient's data. So it used to be out to go find a computer, and now you can bring up the, the app from one of the major vendors for the clinical systems and you can get all the data there. Um, you know, you can capture data there. And so I think it's the overall capability set that the smart devices give you that are pushing people down the path of it's time. We've got to roll out these devices. We'll save a bit on computers on wheels. We'll, we'll put out some smartphones and then what they don't want to do is hand you a smartphone and a pager.

Peter Birch: Yeah.

Martin Maczynski: And so our business is to make those devices work in the same reliable, dependable, simple way as those pages. And that's not as easy as it sounds. Things like, um, you know, you can mute your smartphone, you can put it in silent. That's not going to work. Well, if your smartphone is delivering fire alarms and security alarms and medical emergencies.

Peter Birch: Yes.

Martin Maczynski: And that is how you consume that. So, you know, most of our challenges, bridging that gap of really dependable always works. You can't turn it off alarming onto a smartphone where you have to actually make it do those things.

Peter Birch: Yeah.

Martin Maczynski: Which is pretty cool. But yeah, it's. For us, it's about making the smartphone do these things as well as everything else it does. The business case for all our smartphones, I think, is much bigger than just us.

Peter Birch: Well, I guess, you know, I think about, at the rate of change and technology and strategy, the, the um, the pressure that's on health systems to be able to do things innovatively with, you know, uh, what, what resources they have. Like just rolling out another paging infrastructure is probably not going to be the, um, the, the, the way to do that at scale. That makes sense. Are there any examples of like, recent deployments or what, though? I'm, I'm big on like, understanding through like, practical examples. Are there any, like, real examples you can share that you're allowed to talk about?

Martin Maczynski: Sure. Um, yeah. Uh, I think so. Some of our recent deployments where they've had the, they've got the modern infrastructure and so, you know, you've got the latest networking and um, so when I look at what we deliver there, um, it's very broad. So we've got everything from switchboard uses, um, it to trigger, uh, any code, so code blue, code black, you know, emergency codes. You've then got another 100 and something automated alerts that come in from all the different connected systems. So if someone breaks a window at night, you get an alert through to security and the staff. Um, and then that's just the alerting site. Then you've got mobile duress, which is, you know, staff panic buttons. Um, ED and mental health, you kind of need that these days. Yeah. So that's a capability there. You've got task management of just managing task flow and managing workflow, who's doing what. Um, and the practical example of that is, you know, we've got. One of our recent deployments has got about 20 buttons at the nurse, um, nurse call, workflow terminal beside every bed. So you can go up to that, um, nurse call, uh, workflow terminal and hit something like patient transfer to call someone to come and transfer the patient. Then that comes to us. And then depending on which bed, which ward, which time of day, we know who to send that task to.

Peter Birch: Yes.

Martin Maczynski: So the setup of this is a bit of a lift because you've got to basically get all the workflows digitized, but once you've done that, everything just works like magic. And you've gotten rid of overhead announcements.

Peter Birch: Yeah.

Martin Maczynski: Um, and it's doing all of these things. We've got patient elopement alarms where, uh, one of our recent sites are known if a patient that's been, um, obviously appropriately flagged as a risk high dementia patient or something, if they go outside of their allowable ward area, the staff gets an allow saying, hey, there's a patient. It's called patient elopement. Um, so there's all these different use cases that are here and now being delivered. Um, and every single one of them kind of drives very specific benefits and value in their area. Yeah, I think our main kind of where we start to talk about return on benefits, um, and some degree return on investment is the fact that we do all of that on one platform instead of investing in all of those things separately and then trying to make them all talk to each other, which is a lot more expensive.

Peter Birch: Yeah.

Host: Real quick. I get asked a version of this question all the time and it's, I want to work in digital health, but I don't know where to start. And I think the challenge a lot of people have is it's not. They're short on the interest to get involved. They don't have the clarity on what to do next. Like they've been watching this space for a while or listening to podcasts like

Peter Birch: this one that then you don't know

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Peter Birch: Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it too the whole concept of return on benefits because I think about you know, purely from a ah, technology or an infrastructure perspective like you got to be able to justify any kind of spend on what you do. Like what are we doing this for? Um, and whilst it's probably a good sensible thing to do, like is there a bridge that you see on like or where is more of the focus? Is it more on we're just benefiting the to a, to be a more modern infrastructure by implementing some of these tools or is there like knock on effects that are. Because if we just replace all the systems underneath and keep doing the same kind of healthcare, it's kind of like well I guess it's tidier but uh, like what happens then that that enables.

Martin Maczynski: Yeah so I think unlike 99% of the people in here, um, we're not very patient centric, we're staff centric indirectly. Um, if we can make the job that a frontline clinical worker does more convenient, more data at the fingertips, more smooth sailing, less frustrating, less looking for things, less looking for people then that to us that's the benefit. The benefit is you've got um, staff that have more uh, I would say what more openness with their time. So giving back care minutes as opposed to just frustration minutes and then the follow on effect of that you would expect is better patient care, right? Yeah, we don't do patient facing tech. It's all about the staff for us it's all about the workers, the frontline workers. It's all about how can we make them more effective. Uh and mainly it's about how can we make every day more convenient for them which is actually, I think it's pretty cool. Uh, and then the hard benefits that that drives is again patient safety Risk. There's all sorts of risk, tangibles. Um, but, you know, it, for us, it does come back to what's the staff's experience across all of these range of workflows. How can we cut down the noise, cut down, uh, what we call clinical burden.

Host: Yes.

Martin Maczynski: And really just open that up so that they're doing the thing that they went to uni to do.

Peter Birch: Yeah, but that's it. Like, you don't, uh. It just seems like a bit of a waste of really effective resources if the humans were resources. And like the. We. We've primed you up, ready to deploy all of your capability towards treating patients. But first I need you to decode this. This bit of technology that you're not really that interested in anyway.

Martin Maczynski: So, like, we've had an explosion of tech, and so what. What I kind of hear, you know, corridor conversations. It adds burden, it doesn't remove burden. Right. And a lot of it is there for the reason. But you, you've got this kind of tech layered on top of tech, laid on top of tech. So, okay, how do you train a new staff member? There's huge attrition in healthcare workforce. How do you even begin to train them in these like 20 systems on day one? Like, God forbid, they're only there for three days.

Host: Right.

Martin Maczynski: And so I think the trick now is to take that tech and remove it from being visible. Yeah, it should just water. Like, you know, think about the insane amount of tech in a new hospital. Um, like, it really is incredible what goes on behind the walls at some of the building infrastructure. You don't see it. It just does it. Right. You don't see how the water comes out of the tap. Like, you don't see. You don't see the reverse osmosis or whatever. Right. Not my field, obviously, but. But you turn the tap on, it comes out.

Peter Birch: Yeah, yeah.

Martin Maczynski: And I think the trick is how do we get tech to be that. How do we get tech to be.

Peter Birch: Yeah, you don't need. You don't need to do a diploma in plumbing to. Is it diplomas. Do diplomas.

Host: Maybe they should.

Peter Birch: Yeah, they could, I think.

Martin Maczynski: So.

Peter Birch: Um. Uh, so the. I guess, uh, indirectly kind of related to a diploma in plumbing, um, in this age where technology advances rapidly, and then those clinicians, or even just health systems that might be more technologically inclined could be experimenting with other tools that exist to basically spin up apps through Claude or Chattyg or like a large language model of some description. It's never been easier to create. Technology is my Hot take at the moment or sorry. To create software. Also great solutions that are powered by digital. Um, you're a software company and there's, you know, in the technology space. What does that leave then for organizations like yourself in this world where anyone can create anything.

Martin Maczynski: You went there. Right. So it's like, what's it like to be a software company when anyone can do anything with Claude? Um, yeah, well, I think we're seeing that in the markets. Like if you look at the SaaS software, software companies that there's been a big hit in valuations. Like with we're seeing that skittishness of whoa. Software. They call it a moat. Right. What's your moat? Software is no longer a moat.

Peter Birch: Yeah.

Martin Maczynski: Code is no longer a moat. And everyone's trying to figure out what that means for them. Um, for us in particular, I think we're in a pretty good place just because software is a key part of what we do as a software company. But you know, the, the time and effort that we've put over the last decade and building the different adapters into these other systems and uh, you know, you've got to. Again, I won't name the systems, but that's a conversation with all these different vendors that is an ongoing, enduring relationship with all of these different parties. And you can't AI that.

Peter Birch: No.

Martin Maczynski: You know, a lot of the information to build these connectors is not public domain. It's not in the GitHub repo, which AI got trained on. So I mean, I'm the biggest fan of AI on the planet. Uh, maybe next to Dave Par, our cto. Um, um, but you know, we're looking at. So we've just shipped our first component, um, which didn't have human hands. Touched the coach.

Peter Birch: Ah.

Martin Maczynski: Uh, review. Yes. No actual intervention. So AI is that good. It really is that good. So instead of being threatened by it, we're just like, that's how we should do things. Because anyone who's not doing things that way, couple of years, that's only going to go one way. But then we've got these sort of enduring relationships with, you know, 100 and something adapters on the catalog.

Peter Birch: Yeah, yeah.

Martin Maczynski: And then you've got, you know, that, that, the fact that it's software plus all this stuff, that stuff is hard to replicate. Whereas the code itself for that app you could probably get Claude to do. I mean my 13 year old was like, hit, check out my app. And it's like a cool app that actually does stuff. I'm like, what is going on. So that is a real thing. And I think there's two types of software companies, those that understand the power of it and those that actually have a value over and above just the code in their repository. Yeah, you're good. That's an opportunity, that's a strength, um, as long as you pivot fast enough. But then anyone who's basically sitting there thinking their moat is the code, I've got all of this intellectual property around this code. If all your software does is present a screen to users, um, and it's not protected through patents or something like that, I think the next few years are going to be pretty tough.

Peter Birch: Yeah, it's a strange way. It's probably as you were talking, I'm like it's kind of similar just to the conversation we're having before about, well, uh, let's free up all of the uh, non value adding time that clinicians need to use to just be able to deliver the thing that they're actually needing to do. I guess on the same side, if you've got technology experts that have tools at their disposal to do parts of the process that just faster and either just as accurate if not better, then that allows them to then do that extra mile which is the actual human, human important part of the, yes, the connectors on the technology side but the relationships too, uh, can't um, be overlooked and probably more valuable at times as well, particularly in this ecosystem. So um, that's really important. Hey lastly Martin, in that framing and with all of that happening, what's kind of on your radar at the moment other than AI building fun apps. But in terms of alinqua, um, what uh, can we look forward to seeing? Where's your priorities over the next 12, 24 months?

Martin Maczynski: So we've had um, I think we've had a big year. Uh, we've increased the amount of functionality out in the wild, um, the number of users using it and um, I think we're kind of still dealing with the fact that we're a grown up now, we're a serious system out there doing serious things and so we're no longer a scrappy startup. But I think we can't lose that vibe either. So I think what we're starting to see is we're a platform for innovation and that platform also has the serious stuff like everything I've just talked about and molecule duress and the things that hospitals need today. But when we talk to hospitals about what's next, it's usually a conversation that's a lot more Vision oriented of like what's next. We can sell you the stuff today that you need, but genuinely have a platform that we can innovate around AI and around these things. And so for us I think it's about balancing the here and now business that we have to run and customers have to depend on which is kind of like that's, you know, they're called bread and butter stuff but it's, it's what you do every day. You get up and you do it. But we've got to balance that with that whole kind of innovation aspect that we got here with. So on the innovation side, to answer your question, very, um, heavily investing in real time location tech. Um, not the hardware but you know that our ah, software overlay that takes in the data around what's there. Once you know where assets are, once you know where patients are and you can start driving extraordinary use cases, you know, the Uber for patient transfer, things like that. And so I think a large part of our investment in the next year that's not just keeping the system that we have running, doing its job properly is, is all about how do we better enable that app and the um, the other parts of the system to do amazing things because they know where things are and it's all convenience, it's all about getting rid of that waste. So yes, in the next 12 months, next 18 months, I think we're going to see a lot of innovation around real time location mapping, um, the visual experience around wayfinding.

Peter Birch: Yeah.

Martin Maczynski: And um, you know, we've made a bit of a hobby in the last few years of bringing together all these systems like security building management and nurse call and kind of taking that data and doing these things with them. And now I think we're looking at, okay, we've got that data but we're also getting all the real time location data from the infrastructure. And so that data set can do amazing things for real time use cases. And that's where the investment's going is like what a magic can we make happen.

Peter Birch: You're like the ash from Pokemon of health tech where you collect them all and put them in your little. That's all I know about Pokemon. Um, however it does help me understand where you're at and the value that you bring. And I think those relationships and the capability part in pulling that information together, that's stuff that a lot of health systems will want to unlock. So all the details for a link were in the show notes of this episode. Uh, make sure you check it out. Lots of content in there. Martin, always a pleasure. I look forward to doing Etsy.

Martin Maczynski: Thanks man. Have a good show.

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