NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL EVENT

Impact Napa

Tuesday, August 26, 2008, 8-10:45 a.m., Napa Valley Marriott, Napa

Best Places to Work 2008 Awards Reception

September 25, 2008, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Doubletree Hotel, Rohnert Park

E-Mail Express

Name:

Company:

E-mail:

Phone:

TECHNOLOGY: Janice Nicholson: Founder of medical software startup sees it as an ‘agent of significant change’

SANTA ROSA – When Janice Nicholson looks around her spacious, light-filled new office she has no cause to remember her first job – cleaning rooms in her aunt’s motel in a rundown section of Los Angeles.

But there’s an odd similarity: At the age of 11, she was working out of necessity, helping her single mother, sister and brother survive in the city they’d moved to from Mississippi.

Today, as founder, president and CEO of disease-tracking software company i2i Systems, she’s working out of necessity again, this time to alert Americans of the danger chronic illness poses for our future.

That would be $6 trillion a year in lost productivity by mid-century and a population ravaged by diabetes, asthma, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

“I’ve become both a vendor and an educator,” said Ms. Nicholson.

Facing down that sort of crisis wasn’t what she had in mind when, as a young wife, she enrolled in the Santa Rosa Junior College, choosing to work toward a degree in psychology. But computer science chose her.

“In psychology there are any number of answers to every question. In computer science and math there’s only one answer. And I found I lacked writing skill,” she said.

But not programming skills. At 23, she joined Hewlett Packard. But the company famous for fostering individuality and innovation among its employees didn’t work its magic on Ms. Nicholson.

“I felt like a number. I had a vision of something more.”

While still at HP, she got involved with Charter Data Processing in Healdsburg, a company that reduced the data collected by analog tracers of air quality for easier analysis. At age 24, she became the owner.

Eventually, digital air-quality tracers rendered the technology obsolete, and Ms. Nicholson moved on to medical software, obtaining a life-long mentor in Peter Bowhall, founder of Medex.

After working for and partnering with several startups, she was serving as vice president of product engineering for HealthPro, a developer of rehabilitation systems, when she came to a realization.

Her hard work had allowed HealthPro to be sold advantageously, but it was to someone else’s advantage.

“I was tired of the boy’s club, and both medical and computer technologies are very much a boy’s club,” she said.

“And I was tired of putting my shoulder behind companies whose focus was on making money and ‘winning’ by being the number one vendor – and the customer is peripheral.”

Envisioning a company that worked together with vendors toward a common goal of improving health care, she and her partner Jason Luders wrote a system for public health clinics that tracks the treatment of chronic disease patients.

The i2i system integrates data from vendors such as electronic health record companies, pharmacies and medical testing laboratories so that an ongoing record of past treatment and future needs is developed for each patient.

“The vendors ignored my vision to fully integrate systems,” she said.

But community health centers and safety net providers – finding they could manage the care of 700 diabetics with the i2i system rather than 70 with spreadsheets – didn’t.

Word traveled from clinic to clinic, and Ms. Nicholson, in the process of explaining her product, became both an expert in how chronic disease is treated today among uninsured and low-income patients and an impassioned advocate for change.

A major victory came her way last month, although she declined to take credit for it. The California HealthCare Foundation announced it would spearhead a statewide initiative to build a registry of chronic disease sufferers.

The CHCF, a major funder of public health clinics, wants them all to be equipped with an i2i-type system. Since i2i is the most comprehensive and the most widely used of its kind, Ms. Nicholson’s company is in for a considerable growth spurt.

Now the vendors are coming to her, eager to interface their systems with i2i.

Another president and CEO might be grinning at the prospect of a lucrative acquisition right about now, but not Ms. Nicholson.

“I’m going to grow this company into an agent of significant change, not leave it to somebody else who doesn’t share my determination,” she said.

The challenges are as daunting as the chronic disease crisis itself.

“I know I must keep my faith that technology will play a part in improving health care for the masses, which only grow in need. And I know I must stay involved and continue to speak out about the necessity for change.”

But she’s given courage by the knowledge that her company’s software is instrumental in easing the daily pain of chronic disease patients.

“And my early struggles taught me something I wouldn’t have learned otherwise: You are never defined by your past,” said Ms. Nicholson.

Book of Lists Online