Downtime Trace CEO Danny Mobley describes the business as being like Uber. Mimicking the familiar features of popular ride-share and food-delivery apps, Downtime Trace is a mobile app that instantly connects health care providers with competent labor and parts options for turnkey service on their medical imaging equipment.
“The app showcases our service brethren – ISOs (independent service organizations), and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), and introducing ‘gig technicians’ – in a LinkedIn/Facebook-style to make it easy for health care providers to see pictures of their service technicians, technical competency and experience on specific makes/models, and ratings and reviews,” Mobley says.
He adds that Downtime Trace pays medical imaging equipment service technicians within hours/days instead of weeks/months! Mobley recently shared more details about Downtime Trace with ICE Magazine.
Q: Can you tell us a little about your company?
A: With a single press of a button, our mobile technology BLASTs a provider’s service request (known as a “Trace Ticket”) to all pre-matched service options while simultaneously notifying pertinent personnel within the provider’s organization (i.e., biomed/HTM, patient scheduling, pre-determined department leaders, chosen clinicians, and/or executive leaders). Downtime Trace app notifications look just like the notifications/alerts you receive on your favorite mobile apps. Only service options that are pre-matched by make/model are qualified to receive the BLASTs and return bids in a standard bid format containing “WHAT” they estimate the problem/solution likely is, “WHEN” they can begin service (estimated onsite arrival time), and “HOW MUCH” they will charge. Providers choose a bid based on the service option’s profile, availability, response time, price, etc.
Finally, like folks entrust ride-share apps to receive payment from the riders and pay the drivers, and like food-delivery apps receive payments from the customers through their app and distribute payments to their delivery drivers, restaurants and stores, Downtime Trace technology serves as the trusted, single-point of payment for health care providers. We receive approved payments and quickly distribute the payments to the service labor and parts entities (within days, not weeks or months). We track all service expenses in the app to allow providers their historic spend on any asset, like seeing past rides on Uber.
Q: How does your company stand out in the imaging space?
A: Downtime Trace pays the service options really fast and keeps it simple for providers, which should stand out quite-a-bit. We piggy-back off of technology that has been around for 10+ years to give provider’s imaging personnel visibility of and easy access to service options that already exist. We actually have the audacity to try something new that might create more service options by making them easy to find, paying them more, and paying them fast. We will likely stand out most for speedy and easy access to all of the imaging equipment service options and for the savings that naturally come with competition, but I hope we also stand out to the radiology technologists and staff for the fact that we set a single standard that makes their jobs easier and lessens their anxiety when their equipment breaks.
Q: How can a single standard make their jobs easier?
A: When a health care provider chooses Downtime Trace over the antiquated methods for ordering and tracking service, it signals their desire for a single standard of service that is far less complicated for their staff than learning hundreds of different policies from hundreds of different service vendors. Providers can easily access, see on their phones, and measure the following relevant service data: response time, downtime/uptime, performance against repair estimates, ratings/reviews of service technicians, and financial information.
Q: What is on the horizon for your company?
A: Downtime Trace is launching this fall! So that’s pretty big for us, but we are especially excited for the gig service technicians and independent service organizations that will have an opportunity to earn supplemental income or more flexibility before the holiday season. A healthy Downtime Trace means we have created more income or freedom for imaging service technicians while saving the health care providers more than 50% of their current spend on imaging equipment maintenance and repairs. Right now, all of that money is going into the hands of large, faceless conglomerates.
There is a lot of excitement about a partnership with an amazing e-sourcing parts company (with great people). Together, we’re stronger and we both have the audacity to believe we can make the industry better while reducing burnout for our small pool of imaging service technicians and parts providers.
Q: Is there anything else you would like ICE Magazine readers to know?
A: Consider that the best things often seem to be the simplest, and that this technology is a baby-step towards the AI that is coming. Our team cannot believe that no one else has brought this idea to market yet. It has been percolating for many years and we know how fortunate we are that the stars have aligned in a way that has allowed us to build this helpful tool. We feel extremely accountable to the service technicians and health care providers to make sure it gets to market and utilized. It likely won’t be easy, and it will require providers to have a little bit of courage, but it can easily work.
Q: Website address for more information:
A: As the founder of Humans of Healthcare USA, I have become a social media influencer to health care executives, so we naturally value social media platforms as much (or more) than a website (downtimetrace.com). Kindly also visit us at Downtime Trace on YouTube, where we have created a 90-second commercial and some videos that give an overview of what Downtime Trace is, how you can describe it to others, how service technicians interface with the app, and how health care providers interface with the app.
