After leaving IBM, I joined Ray Daniels in my first entrepreneurial experience. He and I both left IBM, with dreams of success. We had an idea to digitize medical records for private-practice doctor’s offices. We had a client server architecture that used a Wi-Fi enabled, tablet computer. The doctor could write (with a digital pen), type (with a keyboard) or dictate (with a microphone). Patient information would be saved in a database server that would stay connected to the tablet as the doctor walked from room to room.
I presented a technical paper on our work at the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), 1993 Spring Congress in St. Louis. Formed in 1989, AMIA, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development and application of biomedical and health informatics in the support of patient care, teaching, research, and health care administration.
I was responsible for systems engineering and requirements analysis. I worked with physicians, nurses and academic faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Cognitive Science Institute.
For the early 1990’s, it was a pretty cool idea. We were pushing the limits of what off-the-shelf computing technology could offer. Unfortunately, there was an initiative in Washington DC to create a national healthcare system, and all investment money was frozen until something got resolved, and we couldn’t hold on indefinitely. I was naive, unprepared and foolish. Let’s just say, “It didn’t go well, or end well.” In the end, I learned a lot of hard lessons, sold my house and moved back to California.
