Innovative Healthcare Startup Kermit Leverages Mendix-built Analytics Platform to Expand Services Nationwide
After being proven in 23 mid-Atlantic hospitals for a combined $75 million per year in medical cost savings, healthcare analytics platform created with Mendix's low-code rapid application development provides foundation for Kermit's national expansion
BOSTON, Dec. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Mendix, a Siemens business and the global leader in low-code and no-code application development for the enterprise, today announced that Kermit, the first spend-management platform for hospitals in the area of implantable medical devices, is announcing plans to expand their services nationwide. Kermit's innovative analytics platform, enabling hospitals to track and manage contracts, billings, and vendor compliance, was built with a single Mendix developer in less than a year. Today's announcement underscores the fact that low code technology from Mendix is ripe for implementation within the healthcare industry.
As knee, hip, and cardio implants move from package to patient, the Mendix-built platform captures data and provides end-to-end visibility into a supplier category known for its notoriously opaque pricing and batch invoicing. With Kermit, the accurate cost and use of each medical device is captured on handheld devices as the medical item moves from point-of-service in the operating room, accurate patient billing and vendor invoice payment, and finally aggregated for contract negotiations by healthcare executives. The data-driven analytics platform transforms a hospital's previously siloed, paper- and spreadsheet-based data collection system into a cost-savings tool that flags supplier trends, optimizes workflows and spending, and provides quick dashboard reporting that has been proven to save hospitals millions of dollars.
"We are thrilled to announce our plans to expand the Kermit services nationwide," says Richard Palarea, CEO and co-founder of Kermit, whose company now manages 40% of the total implant spend transacting in Maryland. "Our goal is not only to provide better data and save money for resource-strapped hospitals. We also want to shine a light on fraud and abuse within the medical device marketing industry and align value and spend management initiatives for the people that dedicate their lives to saving others. Our customers are now seeing significant savings in their medical device spending category. We wouldn't have been able to achieve all this had it not been for Mendix. We built our platform using Mendix, and I attribute a large portion of our success to the ease of using Mendix's low-code platform."
Providing transparency and control
Fraud and abuse often run rampant in the sales and marketing of drugs and medical devices and is difficult to track across the healthcare industry's siloed or proprietary data warehouse systems. Kermit provides a transparent analytics platform for surgeons, supply chain managers, and healthcare executives that connects medical device data to robust visualization and analysis, empowering the full team to make quality decisions on behalf of the patient. For surgeons, the platform provides an easy and transparent way to review the costs of implantable medical devices while discussing options with patients. Kermit also ensures fair and accurate billing by keeping cases, contracts, and devices updated and organized for supply chain managers. Additionally, Kermit pulls in external business intelligence such as supplier spending trends, contract compliance, and FDA recalls of medical devices. Such items, flagged for healthcare executives and procurement managers, provide knowledge and insight on device-related inefficiencies, equipping hospital to better navigate the ever-changing reimbursement environment.
Saving hospitals millions
Hospitals are working under immense pressure to manage costs and increase savings, with many operating on profit margins of 3 percent or less. Kermit's founding principle is to return the balance of power back to the hospital by exposing ways to eliminate millions of dollars per year in the category of medical device spending and improving patient care. The University of Maryland Medical System, which has used the Kermit analytics platform over the course of two years, has achieved upwards of $30 million in savings, with greater visibility to vendor activity and collaboration between supply chain and surgeons. Hospitals in the mid-Atlantic region that have adopted Kermit report saving 30% on average of their total implant spend per year.
Built in nine months
Palarea cites Mendix's flexible approach to rapid application development as a key competitive differentiator. "Without Mendix, it would have taken us nearly twice as long to develop our product and required us to hire five to ten developers instead of one," he says. "We would have lost the window of being first to market this innovative approach."
Mendix's cloud-native capability enables Kermit to bypass hospital firewalls for additional time and efficiency gains. "Hospital IT departments can be bottlenecks," Palarea admits. "Enterprise solutions can take between one to three years to implement. However, our customers access our Mendix-built platform via web browsers and connectivity. This lets Kermit bypass IT involvement and deploy our solution in less than seven days."
The healthcare industry's digital transformation depends on healthy data. "To leverage the inherent promise of big data analytics in the healthcare supply chain of medical devices is only achieved with a deep understanding of what customers and end users truly need and use on a daily basis," says Jon Scolamiero, Mendix manager, architecture and governance. "Mendix's application development tools are designed to foster collaboration between business experts and professional developers. Working together, they can build and deploy responsive, mission-critical applications that quickly make an impact."
Palarea agrees. "Mendix has allowed us to be extremely nimble and flexible," he says. "We are literally innovating in the midst of our hospital customers who are unaccustomed to seeing value delivered so rapidly and well below the expected budget numbers."
For more information about how Mendix can help transform your business, please visit www.mendix.com.
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Mendix, a Siemens business and the global leader in low-code and no-code application development for the enterprise, is fundamentally reinventing the way applications are built in the digital enterprise. With the Mendix platform, enterprises can 'Make with More,' by broadening an enterprise's development capability to conquer the software development bottleneck; 'Make it Smart,' by making apps with rich native experiences that are intelligent, proactive, and contextual; and 'Make at Scale,' to modernize core systems and build large app portfolios to keep pace with business growth. The Mendix platform is built to promote intense collaboration between business and IT teams and dramatically accelerate application development cycles, while maintaining the highest standards of security, quality, and governance — in short, to help enterprises confidently leap into their digital futures. Mendix's 'Go Make It' platform has been adopted by more than 4,000 leading companies around the world.
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