Ep. 12 - Fox Holt: Vigilant Software | HLTH 2023

Our guest today is Fox Holt, the CEO of Vigilant Software, an organization that is digitizing the last mile of drug delivery by automating the labeling of medications administered during a procedure. Enjoy the show!

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Welcome back to the Medi Apps show brought to you by the Medical Logistics and Transportation Organization,
Medi Apps.
I'm your host,
Ryland Stone.
Our guest today is Fox Holt,
the CEO of Vigilant Software,
an organization that is digitizing the last mile of drug delivery by automating the labeling of medications administered during a procedure.

(00:29):
I hope you enjoy the show.
Hey,
Fox,
thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Thank you,
Ryland.
So let's jump right into it.
We're live at health 2023 today.
How is the conference been treating you?
Oh,
it's,
it's a whirlwind.
You know,
it's huge.
Lots of partners,
investors,
customers,
a lot of these conferences,
you know,
you just focus on one of those,
but in this one,

(00:49):
you got all three,
they do it all,
they do it really well.
So let's go back to you.
Let's flash back to your origin story.
Where did you start?
Uh,
what's your background,
family,
life school,
all that?
Oh,
wow.
That's a great question.
Um,
computer science,
you know,
finance sales guy.
Um I,
I've been an entrepreneur,
start up guy for the last 15 years.

(01:11):
Uh It's my passion and this is my first foray into health care and it has been,
uh,
quite a experience.
Very cool.
So,
how long?
So,
I don't know if you've touched on it yet,
but you're with vigilant software.
Yes.
Can you give me a 32nd elevator pitch on what they do?
Sure.
We digitized the last mile of drug delivery by automating the patient safety process when nurses are preparing medications.

(01:37):
Ok.
So give me like kind of a story.
I'm a nurse.
I'm caring for some my my four patients.
How is your service helping me?
Perfect question.
So when a nurse needs to administer a medication,
like like give an infusion of norepinephrine,
the process there is they go to the drug cabinet,
grab the drug,
but then they need to create their own safety labels and expiration labels.

(02:01):
So for the infusions,
they have IV tube labels and they have to mentally calculate the day of the week that this drug tube needs to be changed.
And so it's a very manual process that is,
you know,
has a lot of opportunities for error and they can accidentally write something on the wrong information,
choose the wrong date.

(02:21):
But with our system,
they simply scan the barcode on the medication and out prints the labels that they need color coded in order with excellent safety precautions so that they don't accidentally give the wrong drug to the wrong patient.
Yeah,
health care error is,
is a big cause of death in the US.
And it sounds like you guys are attacking that and making it safer for everybody.

(02:43):
Absolutely.
You know,
there were last year,
there was a situation where the is and p alerted the health care industry to a situation where a nurse accidentally started a wrong pump because she didn't label she started a fentaNYL pump instead of a lactated ringers pump and the patient.
Odd.
Yeah,
that's,
that's not good.
So you guys are definitely in a space that is gonna save lives.

(03:05):
So that's really cool to see throughout your executive experience what have been some challenges you've encountered specifically with vigilant software.
You know,
it's,
it's the purchasing process that hospitals go through.
You know,
it's,
it's so different from system to system and giving to the right players,
you know,
looking at this conference and seeing the number of booths,

(03:27):
the number of companies that are trying to sell the hospitals.
That's the real challenge is these hospitals need so much help.
It's where do they start and,
and they're,
you know,
they're not spectacular at,
at,
you know,
assessing technologies and business and what can be impactful and implementing them quickly.
So it,
it's,
it's,
it's very,
it's a big challenge not to mention the it departments,

(03:48):
you know,
they're just overloaded.
I mean,
they have a tough challenge,
right?
You know,
the patient safety information,
all the medical information and,
and making it all work.
I I it,
you know,
and keeping everybody's information safe.
It's tough,
it is tough for your kind of traction to date.
What have you found to be some big successes?
Yeah.
Well,
by avoiding the it departments.

(04:11):
Ok,
so you're going into.
So,
so we,
we have been working with the critical care nurse managers and the people who have the,
the challenges,
you know,
themselves,
they are preparing more drugs than any other nurses in the units and working with them and,
and not needing the network in order to make our base level product.

(04:33):
Right.
So we have our solution fits on a Honeywell printer where we actually put software and drug database where the nurse,
as I said,
simply scans the bar code and all the information is there.
And so it makes that label in two seconds every time because we're not waiting on network being down or not or what have you.
And the nurse manager can make a decision within,

(04:54):
you know,
10 days and we can deploy it in another two or three days.
It's our sale cycles for health care is remarkably low.
We've had as low as 15 days sale cycles from the first conversation to deployed.
And you know,
it's,
it's making it tremendously easy for the nurse managers to purchase and implement.

(05:17):
We give nurse satisfaction surveys.
When they're doing trials,
we give them all the information they need to fill for the capital analysis review.
We,
we just white glove,
make sure it's tremendously easy because they're so busy that,
that almost leads into my next question.
If you were giving advice to a senior executive or just other C suite coming into health care,

(05:39):
you,
you started outside of health care.
Now you're in health care.
What have been some takeaways that you could formulate as advice to a,
to a new executive.
Yeah,
I think,
um,
you know,
we,
we always want the big system deal,
right?
But you got to break it down into chunks,
right?
You've got to build momentum.
Like what vigilant is doing,
we're selling individual hospitals.

(06:01):
And then once we've got two or three evangelist nurse managers,
we're then going to the system level to say,
hey,
look,
we've already done your pilot.
This is easy.
Let's go check it out.
Let's see what they say.
Look at their compliance rating,
look at their patient safety rating and it'll be a lot easier and so breaking it down into chunks,
getting your wins,
getting your revenue without needing that big 18 month,

(06:23):
24 month sale cycle.
Um That's my advice and that's what's worked really well for vigilant.
Yeah.
No,
that's great advice.
Really.
Find those champions that can push your product through,
get it implemented and then you can demonstrate that value.
Uh that,
that's really great advice for anyone who wants to connect with vigilant or yourself.
Where can they find you,

(06:43):
uh Vigilant software dot IO uh or send an email to sales at vigilant software dot IO.
Great.
Sounds good.
Well,
thank you so much for being on the show.
I have appreciated our conversation and I hope you enjoy the rest of health.
Yes,
sir.
Thank you Island.