Part 3, ANAND SURANA, CEO of ICEGEIN

 Part 1, discussed the context in which I met Anand Surana, the CEO of ICEGEIN

Part 2, covered how Anand started ICEGEIN.  We left off with a discussion of how RTLS/RFID providers should offer options aside from enterprise wide implementation.  The post hinted at a move by ICEGEIN that goes well beyond EMR partnerships and integration efforts.

Enterprise coverage is for broad needs to leverage and reinforce best practices, increase safety and effective communications, and collect data across the enterprise.  A medical facility may have more pressing, more specialized needs for a specific service, like tracing travel patterns, surgical set tracking, pharmaceutical tracking or area workflow.   Eventually, this information should be shared by electronic medical records, enterprise resource planning, material management information systems ,  asset management systems, or others.  Again, integrators can have great value here. 

Anand stated, “When we initially looked at RTLS, we considered a number of products, including UHF.  We balanced our considerations against the customers we were trying to reach. WiFi was pervasive.  But, we also work with 900MHz and have other technologies deployed as well.”

“You mentioned growth.  How are you growing ICEGEIN?” I asked.

Anand answered, “Overall, we have 11 deployments in hospitals and 38 deployments in other industries.  ICEGEIN is growing, but our growth is not solely about this company.”

“Please elaborate.”

“ICEGEIN is considered a vertical industry of the Surana Group.  The Surana Group purchased two businesses in the United States which indicates our direction: Trust RCM and Medical Management Strategies.”

Trust RCM and Medical Management Strategies expand U.S. capabilities in Physician Practice Management, Revenue Cycle, Coding, Denial Management, Accounts Receivable flow analysis, billing collection, contract credentialing, and management consulting.

Here is a quick example of the implications of the Trust RCM acquisition.  Trust RCM provides HCC solutions (Hierarchical Condition Coding).  HCC codes help insurance companies assess the risks associated with a beneficiary’s health condition.  Furthermore, insurance companies use the codes to project the resource needed to manage a beneficiary’s care in the following year.  A beneficiary with no known medical conditions should take less money to treat than someone with a chronic and potentially debilitating medical condition.

With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies face restrictions on dropping people from coverage. The accuracy and precision in this coding is even more crucial for profitability.

Enter the connector of many things great and small, the integrator.  ICEGEIN’s motto is “Get the right data to the right people in the right place at the right time.”  Automation and connectivity helps with data standardization which, in turn, helps accuracy and precision.   

ICEGEIN clearly has a path connected to a greater play in healthcare based on the financial implication of accurate and consistent patient information.  Connections to supply chain solution and/or electronic medical record providers are important.  Most all RFID/RTLS providers in the healthcare space are moving or have moved in this direction.  The connection to insurance companies is certainly a place these providers hope to be. The Surana Group’s acquisition of companies that specialize in bringing together hospital data with key information that insurance companies use – to me, this seems like a potentially significant market advantage for ICEGEIN.

Now, ICEGEIN has offices in Spain (Barcelona), United States (Baldwin, New York) and California (San Luis Obispo), and India (Chennai and Chochin). They have chosen to go with their own branding in the U.S. instead of rebranding through resellers, starting this year, 2014.  This should raise the company’s visibility, as well.  

In response to these potential synergies coming together Anand responded, “We are a very serious global technology partner.  Anything under the RFID/RTLS sun, we can solve. We have best in class talent pool.”

Nevertheless, it is easy to see how Anand’s vision of having a global IT company within the healthcare industry is a key play for the Surana Group.

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ANAND SURANA, CEO of ICEGEIN Part 1

A New Generation of Sight and Movement

Anand Surana is a co-founder and the CEO of ICEGEIN. The company is a Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) solution provider.  ICEGEIN offers enterprise deployments, as well as, integration services for Asia, The European Union, and the Americas in the industries of healthcare, banking, and manufacturing. ICEGEIN is an acronym, for Information, Communication, and Entertainment Generation Computing. 

ANAND SURANA, CEO of ICEGEIN 

Anand’s vision is, as it was, fifteen years ago when he helped found ICEGEIN.  “Build a global information technology company!”  ICEGEIN is a privately held company of the Surana Group, which is among the largest industrial businesses in India.  ICEGEIN is fully backed by the Surana Group and is part of a larger global strategy for healthcare.  With the resources of the Surana Group, he has leads ICEGEIN in making serious strides toward global growth.

The Surana Group’s industrial businesses include:

- Bhagyanagar India Limited – They produce ferrous and non-ferrous metals for motors, electronic panels, telecommunications power distribution, and solar energy components. 

- Surana Telecom and Power LTD – Aluminum and optical fiber for Telecom is its focus.

- Surana Venture LTD – Renewable energy production is its focus.

Anand and I met over Linkedin in 2010 as a result of me figuring out how to get something done on a shoestring budget.  Not only is necessity the mother of invention, it’s the father of necessary connections.  I faced a material shortage. I really couldn’t find the right material to effectively communicate how RTLS could help improve workflow in our medical center. YouTube, embedded multimedia ads, and other content were not readily available as it is now. I looked to help from my connections and their connections to fill that need. 

Nursing had been part of our overall strategy development.  Only, our initial implementation was for asset management.  That’s where intense focus had been, implementing centralized asset utilization and temperature monitoring.  The time had come to move toward the broader applications, like patient transport. This approach was written into our acquisition plan. It included some concepts not found in many acquisition plans.

First, I wrote the manner in which we would make key decisions about hardware and software expansions all the way through a three year useful life-cycle. Second, making those key decisions meant taking intellectual ownership of outcomes. The plan did not contain the words intellectual ownership. I built the concepts intrinsically and inextricably into the plan.  These concepts guided the very first slide bullets in every presentation given throughout the project.   

For example, the opening statement of the plan read, “We need a better way to understand the condition of our assets and how to minimize their effect on our cash flow.” This statement may sound like a sales pitch.  Indeed, it was used to help sell the idea to leadership.  That doesn’t mean that the team wasn’t intensely driven to make it happen.  And taking intellectual ownership was established in the minds of those involved by the words better, way, understand, condition, our, how, and minimize. All of these words can require both cognitive and physical involvement.  By briefing these words over and over again, I hoped that they would plant the seeds of intellectual ownership.

The vendor’s Vice President of Marketing was very helpful in guiding our approach, as well.  She more than helped me not to forget to reengage nursing through the nursing education department after our initial implementation. 

Our team chose not to use only the vendor’s material.  We looked at other slide presentations, a few well-polished talking heads videos we found, and white papers.  None of them really worked. These were fine for supporting the effort.  We needed something better with which to lead.  Around October 2010, a link to an ICEGEIN video came through my Linkedin connections.  I watched the video then forwarded it to my nursing contact. 

The ICEGEIN video showed RTLS use in a large, real world clinical setting outside the United States - not simulated, real world and everything that comes with it.  That’s what I really appreciated about the video. 

I found Anand’s contact information on Linkedin. He was happy to let us use the ICEGEIN video for training.  The video went over very well with the nursing education department and other key nursing staff.

Coming Soon:

In Part 2: The origins of ICEGEIN

In Part 3: Healthcare Integration, Greater moves than an EMR integration