For years, hospitals and medical centers have been saddled with a common ailment — thousands of dollars of surplus medical devices and implants that go unused, resulting in huge hits to their bottom lines.
Now, there might be some help.
MDLMedical.com, a Stonington startup, is a members-only, online exchange that helps hospitals and surgical centers buy and sell new, unused medical devices and implants; purchase needed inventory at market-determined prices; and recover some of the costs of their idle surgical inventory.
Members trade only new devices, in their original packaging, and ship them to each other. Membership and initial listing fees are free.
Funded in part by an investment from Connecticut Innovations, MDLMedical made its official debut at the Association for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management meeting a couple of weeks ago in San Antonio, where participants were able to sign up to activate accounts and begin trading immediately.
“This is a service hospitals have needed for a long time,” says Carl Hillegass, a founding partner and 18-year veteran of medical device sales. “The average hospital has between $500,000 and $1 million tied up in inventory that doesn’t heal patients, doesn’t meet the current needs of their surgeons and does serious damage to the hospital’s bottom line.”
MDLMedical has already entered a partnership with the Yankee Alliance — a member-driven organization of healthcare providers across the country providing services designed to enhance its members’ financial, operational and clinical effectiveness — to serve its 90 member hospitals, as well as several individual New England hospitals.
There are any number of reasons why hospitals end up with such a glut of inventory, including wanting to meet the changing needs of physicians, keeping up with new technology, or carrying an array of devices in anticipation of patient needs.
When it comes to devices such as implants, manufacturers often package these in specific quantities. What the hospital doesn’t use will sit on the shelf and, if not used before the expiration date, will end up in the trash.
MDLMedical offers a new alternative.
“When I tell materials managers about this they say, ‘why didn’t someone think of this before?’ Hillegass said. “This just expands their neighborhood by offering an open exchange web-based platform for member hospitals to trade idle inventory countrywide. It uses the power of the web to match one member’s excess inventory with another institution’s needs. Both members win — the seller recovers lost funds and the buyer gets new inventory for a lower price. ”
For more information about MDLMedical, go to www.mdlmedical.com.
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Humongo Agency
With a wide-open office environment, a nothing-is-taboo selection of tunes playing throughout the office, supporting local community events and, of course, obligatory beer Fridays — sure, you could say that working at Humongo, a digital, mobile and social media marketing agency in Norwalk, is fun.
But Humongo is about much more than just fun.
The company was originally founded as a design firm called Plaid by music-industry veteran Darryl Ohrt in 1996 in Danbury. As the agency was quick to adapt to the exploding interactive and digital world, its presence on social media platforms also grew.
“Before we knew it, we were doing it for some pretty awesome brands and seeing a lot of success,” says Kristien Del Ferraro, director of digital and social media strategy. “So it sort of evolved organically from there… It just felt right for who we were.”
The growth didn’t go unnoticed.
In 2010, Norwalk’s Source Marketing, part of MDC Partners, acquired Plaid and the company became Humongo, which now has about 40 employees spread among offices in Norwalk, Providence and Pittsburgh.
Some of Humongo’s larger clients include Verizon, Crayola, ERIE Insurance, BIC, Ecko Watches, EMI and Segway.
Humongo, which has experienced revenue growth in each of the past five years, helps its clients accomplish marketing goals by working in partnership with them from beginning to end of a project, whether it’s designing a corporate website, creating online loyalty and CRM programs, developing engaging mobile applications, creating a roadmap to help brands navigate the social media space or actually managing a client’s social presence on a day-to-day basis.
“We’re the complete package,” says Del Ferraro. “We deliver and execute on big ideas very quickly, without losing sight of our client’s bottom line. We do it with the attention to schedules, budget and strategic results your left brain needs, with all the creativity and fun your right brain craves.”
For more information about Humongo, go to www.humongoagency.com.
Startup Spotlight is a periodic feature highlighting young, innovative Connecticut companies looking to make an impact in the state and beyond. Have an idea for Startup Spotlight? Contact John Lahtinen at jlahtinen@HartfordBusiness.com.