Today we’d like to introduce you to Dennis Boyle.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
MobileHelp was founded initially by Elias Janetis, who had been in the medical alarm business for several years. In conversations with customers, he often got the question, “How far does the medical alert button work from the house?”
With cell phone and GPS standard to the communications industry, he couldn’t understand why a medical alert system had to be constrained by a phone line and to the house itself – and he set out to change that.
He brought on Rob Flippo and the two of them committed themselves to solving that simple problem and providing seniors with an option for personal emergency response that worked both in and outside of the home.
Since that time, the company has added technologists who could help bring the best product to the marketplace. We looked for people who were forward thinking and diligent to detail (with a life safety product, it was imperative to test much more rigorously than with other consumer products). We looked for people who could form the right customer service teams, monitoring services and make sure we had back-up solutions to our back-up solutions.
After more than a decade of working in the field of emergency response, we recognized many years ago that the key to innovation in the industry was taking the issue further upstream – that is, trying to prevent emergencies (such as falls) from happening in the first place.
This very basic idea, shifted the entire trajectory of the company and its business model, from a reactive system to a proactive solution.
To that end, we have begun to introduce products and services that proactively help our customers maintain long-term wellness.
And as the company grew from that initial 2 people to now more than 200 team members, we established a new vision statement, which reflected not only the company mission, but also the team of people we are: “Be someone’s hero. Every day.”
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Our founders (Rob and Elias) would tell you they launched the company in the middle of the worst economic disaster of recent time. And, when asked about how they achieved success during such a difficult economy, they often describe a combination of market timing and tenacity.
Assessment of Market Timing: After developing the business plan, they decided to introduce a mobile version of a personal emergency response system (M-PERS) to work within an existing market that had seen virtually no innovation in more than 30 years: the PERS industry status quo was a wired phone line system that limited the user to stay within a few hundred feet of their home.
The simple premise behind MobileHelp was freedom: they wanted people to be able to live their lives with the safety of a PERS system, regardless of their location. They also wanted caregivers to have peace of mind around the ability to locate the user with a simple web interface.
Though the technology supported this advancement and customers (and their caregivers) wanted a mobile solution, no one else had brought the idea to market – which made the timing perfect.
Tenacity: In October 2008, the financial crisis was in full swing, and most investors were worried about their bank accounts and not remotely interested in taking a risk on an early-stage startup.
But Rob diligently worked to raise funds using only a crude balsa wood model and a prototype tracking device (which he candidly admits only worked about 50% of the time – as a generous estimate). He never gave up, though success was slow in coming.
He knew that he needed to strategically built a network of people who understood that the market would get better and more importantly – that the idea had sound business fundamentals. In the end, this tenacity paid off and they were able to successfully launch MobileHelp.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
In the briefest of terms, we make sure people stay safe out there and we do so, by providing a wide range of emergency response services and solutions.
That said, we look to our customers to define what “out there” is for them – and our pledge is to support whatever that looks like. For example, an avid hiker might define “out there” as a rocky ledge outcropping in one of our national parks. A person with congestive heart failure might define “out there” as the walk to a neighbor’s home or to the mailbox down at the end of the driveway. A senior might define “out there” as her grandson’s wedding, across the country.
In emergency response, the most critical design aspect is simplicity – the product has to be easy to engage with, to ensure getting help is as simple as pressing a button.
All of our products meet that criteria: when the user presses the “Help” button, trained operators receive the call for assistance and know who the user is, where they are located and can contact them through our product solution to determine the scope of the emergency and provide the right level of response.
Seniors above the age of 65 (and frequently older than that), were our primary market when we first entered this space more than a decade ago. But with technology advancements, we’ve been able to provide a wider array of product solutions and services to reach more deeply into that group of seniors, as well as a broader set of customers in general.
For example, two years ago, we looked to expand on our product offering and announced a new service called MobileVitals, which allows people to track and monitor their vital signs (such as weight and blood pressure). MobileVitals is a “telehealth-lite” solution – which means it allows people to self-monitor their vitals, as opposed to having a clinician involved in the biometric monitoring and analysis process.
Many of our customers struggle under the weight of chronic illnesses – from diabetes to heart-related diseases and solutions like MobileVitals allow them to manage their health in a more comprehensive way.
As another example, our newest product solution is MobileHelp Smart, which we created in collaboration with Samsung. This new solution delivers our customized user interface on the Samsung Gear S3 smartwatch, which allows people to easily get help in an emergency situation while also taking advantage of the everyday features and benefits available on the Gear S3.
With this new product solution, we anticipate reaching a broader set of audiences – from men who may have been reluctant to utilize an emergency response device in the past, to patients with chronic illnesses who want to better monitor aspects of their health, to extreme athletes who want to be able to access emergency help while training in strenuous or dangerous environments.
As we make those devices even more relevant to health conditions – from sharing data with physicians to delivering daily care plans based on data results to linking with electronic health records – we believe, it has the potential to impact consumer costs associated with healthcare in the long-term.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mobilehelp.com
- Phone: 1-800-992-0616
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mobilehelpllc/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MobileHelpNow
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