Pharmacy Efficiency Redefined: QuicksortRX

00;00;00;21 - 00;00;19;27

Jonathan Yantis

Three or four months later, we were saving more than my salary every week. It was like, OK. I was like, almost. I was like, I have to do something. I can't do this. I can't abandon this one. I have to see this through and do because if I can help this hospital, I can help these other hospitals. I just at that point, I was like, OK, I'm going to have to look into starting a company.

00;00;21;27 - 00;00;36;22

Kevin Smith

Welcome to the Innovatively Speaking Podcast, a podcast brought to you by the Medical University of South Carolina. In each episode, we dive into the origins of the next big things the who, the why, and how we explore ideas that are changing what's possible here at the Medical University of South Carolina. And in some cases, all across the world.

00;00;37;03 - 00;00;44;03

Kevin Smith

I'm Kevin Smith here in the MUSC podcast studio with my co-host, the chief innovation officer here at MUSC, Dr. Jesse Goodwin. Good morning, Jesse.

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Jesse Goodwin

Good morning, Kevin.

00;00;45;11 - 00;01;03;11

Kevin Smith

All right. Today we're talking about pharmacies, in particular, the business aspect of pharmacies whenever we go pick up our prescriptions. Rarely do we think about all the logistics involved in getting from the the source to the patient. Our guest is Jonathan Yantis. Jesse, tell me a little bit about why Jonathan is a good fit for this podcast.

00;01;03;18 - 00;01;27;21

Jesse Goodwin

Yeah, so Jonathan leads one of our MUSC startup companies, and has been very successful, but is a former MUSC employee. So I got to know Jonathan when he was still at MUSC working in our Information Solutions Department. I mean, he always had a really sort of innovative and entrepreneurial spirit. He had started some get together networking groups for other individuals who were also interested in the same thing.

00;01;27;21 - 00;01;39;28

Jesse Goodwin

And so it was of no surprise to me when Jonathan figured out that he had a product and wanted to, you know, go start a company. And so it'll be fun to have a conversation with him today about what that journey has looked like for him.

00;01;42;27 - 00;01;58;08

Kevin Smith

Welcome to the podcast, Jonathan. It says in the QuicksortRx website that you have spent over 12 years developing a user centered solutions to complex issues at enterprise health systems. Give us a little backstory, how you become interested in pharmacies and how they operate.

00;01;58;22 - 00;02;18;05

Jonathan Yantis

Yeah, it's interesting. Thank you for having me. So you know, I've always been interested in computers and using technology to solve problems. I grew up as a nerd, you know, back when it wasn't cool, but it was, you know, my sort of obsession was like understanding how computers work and understanding how this technical landscape actually functions. And so that kind of started my journey.

00;02;18;14 - 00;02;41;20

Jonathan Yantis

And so for me, I was always interested in how can I apply my skills to help people but not get trapped by starting a business too early? Or I really want to just scale up and understand. So one thing the Medical University really gave me an opportunity to do. I really before this, I only worked in universities. I was at the College of Charleston, and I basically went there as a student worker.

00;02;41;20 - 00;03;03;16

Jonathan Yantis

And I really just sort of continued my education and my education was around technology and understanding how it worked. And so I just started slowly building little websites for people and finding that it was really nice to solve problems for people and delight them. And so I got really good at that and sort of building like, hey, here's a little website, press the button and your problem will go away.

00;03;03;25 - 00;03;30;07

Jonathan Yantis

And so those sort of little solutions started mushrooming into bigger and bigger projects. And so once I saw the little problem, I was like, oh, I can solve a little bit bigger problem. And so eventually, you know, I was a network architect here at MUSC for many years, so I designed like their communication network. And so what was interesting about being on the network at MUSC is that, you know, obviously we're on the network right now doing this podcast, everybody's phone, everything from the EMR to genomics, which used to be in this building I don't know if they still are.

00;03;30;26 - 00;03;53;11

Jonathan Yantis

All of these radiology, all these folks need the network to operate. And so eventually I got to interact with every part of the organization. So I got to learn a little bit about what everybody did from the research side to the, you know, obviously to the hospital side and the IMR side. And, you know, over the years that just gave me a real breadth of the organization and how it operated and what the larger goals were.

00;03;53;21 - 00;04;12;11

Jonathan Yantis

And so that allowed me to start, you know, broadening my own horizons about what is the biggest problem that I see, what's important to the leadership here and how can I position myself to start focusing on some of those bigger problems through that whole process of like asking all these people, where are the problems that I see that I might be interested in?

00;04;12;11 - 00;04;32;18

Jonathan Yantis

Because it it had to be a combination of something I could solve and was passionate about someone told me about this guy who's now my co-founder, Matt Hubbard, in a back room managing all of these pharmaceutical purchases with spreadsheets. And he he was pulling his hair out trying to find out how to reduce costs in our pharmacy supply chain.

00;04;32;18 - 00;04;51;00

Jonathan Yantis

And they had no tools. It was it was almost like they were stuck in the stone age. And so for me, I was like, I would like to take a look, give me the data. And that sort of started this whole journey, which was I just wasn't afraid to take a look there was a lot to learn. You know, pharmacy was something I was completely unfamiliar with.

00;04;51;00 - 00;05;09;14

Jonathan Yantis

I mean, it was just a different area. But once I sort of learned the pharmacy stuff, I realized the technology here was just so far behind the type of things that we had in the data center and other areas of the hospital. It was like there's an opportunity here to do something. And so that's just kind of how it all kind of came together.

00;05;09;14 - 00;05;11;13

Kevin Smith

So so the right guy for the job, for sure.

00;05;12;10 - 00;05;34;06

Jesse Goodwin

So we talk on the show, Jonathan, about creative solutions to a Pain Point. And so it sounds like you were on a mission to find a pain point that could be solved. And you met Matt and the pain point that he was looking at was there overhead cost or the actual direct costs of our pharmacy supply? And then sort of a secondary cost, it sounds like was better management of it.

00;05;34;20 - 00;05;49;27

Jesse Goodwin

And to move it off the spreadsheets into something more automated. So can you talk a little bit more about why those each of those things are important? So why why is the cost of a concern? And and sort of you can put that in the big picture.

00;05;50;07 - 00;06;20;13

Jonathan Yantis

Yeah. You know, I guess when I was looking for an innovative project, there were a lot of opportunities here at MUSC but they were capital intensive or took a lot of time. And then when I went around looking in the organization I hit, where do we have these funds? We didn't have a lot of excess funds to fund innovation And so, you know, when you look at the hospital's finances, I remember the year we left, you know, we do $1,000,000,000 in revenue, but our profit was like $20 million And so there was there was very little excess there to play with and to invest.

00;06;20;21 - 00;06;43;24

Jonathan Yantis

And so so my perspective was, well, if I can find a way to improve the bottom line here, then we can maybe potentially the hospital can reinvest these profits in a, you know, an expanding services or expanding innovation or all these other areas. And so it just struck me that if there's one thing the hospital needed it at that time, or at least up front, was to improve their bottom line, and then maybe we could open up other opportunities.

00;06;43;24 - 00;07;04;10

Jonathan Yantis

And so no margin, no mission no if heard, you know, the incident was that was my mind's at the time was like, OK, if I'm going to work on something, I wanna work on something that pays for itself so we can justify the next innovation and that was just sort of how all of this came together. Now, pharmacy is the second or third largest budgeted emergency behind Labor and Perioperative.

00;07;04;18 - 00;07;29;01

Jonathan Yantis

It sort of flips at each hospital, but it's a huge cost center and it's extremely complicated. So I would say it's more complicated than paying your taxes. You know, there's multiple prices they pay and different rebates and different mixes of, you know, all sorts of obscure opportunities that exist in the marketplace that are just obscured by the complexity and so for us, you know, our goal is to create like a Turbo Tax solution.

00;07;29;01 - 00;07;57;28

Jonathan Yantis

We can't change all the regulations and go to Congress and fix this thing, but we can create a solution that shows you where all the little goodies are at very easily without having to reverse engineer every little thing in the world. And so for our customers, it's like, hey, we'll put the solution in place. We can be up and running in 30 days and we'll pull out all the things that you may have missed because it's just so obscure and then those create an incredible opportunity for hospitals.

00;07;57;28 - 00;08;04;05

Jonathan Yantis

And so all of our hospitals are saving at least $1,000,000 a year now, some of them more. And so it's very, very exciting.

00;08;04;23 - 00;08;26;10

Jesse Goodwin

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of the things that your company does sort of as a cornerstone is to help them determine where they should be purchasing their own medication supplies from. Yeah. And I think that probably for the audience listening, that might be a little confusing because we think about it. We go to a pharmacy we pick it up and we just pay the actual price.

00;08;26;10 - 00;08;51;16

Jesse Goodwin

And then so why would we be why would a hospital be looking at something like that? But I think what's probably less clear is that there's a lot of pharmacy supplies when we think about seeing lean and things of that that we give that we don't get reimbursed for directly. Correct? Right. And so the the whole cost of care is sort of whipped in to what an insurance company or Medicaid or Medicare is going to pay us back.

00;08;51;16 - 00;09;18;03

Jesse Goodwin

And so there's an opportunity to look at sort of each point of what's being delivered in care to start to look for how can we reduce our actual cost such that when we're reimbursed for it, it actually covers more of that expense. And I kind of liken it to like nowadays everyone in school shopping time, right? So if you're like my youngest wants a pair of Nike Blazers because that's what all the middle schoolers are wearing.

00;09;18;03 - 00;09;39;28

Jesse Goodwin

And so it's like, you know, you can go on to Google and look at like where can you get the cheapest cost for Nike Blazers right? And I don't think health systems really thought about purchasing in that way. And that's sort of one of the problems and one of the solutions that you're you're you know, that you brought for them was sort of giving a more holistic look at how we should be approaching our our purchasing.

00;09;40;17 - 00;09;57;24

Jonathan Yantis

Very much so. And so, you know, our goal is to provide a total view of everything you're purchasing from all your sources, whether it's direct, whether you're purchasing through your wholesaler or secondary wholesalers so that you can see everything I'm purchasing and then all of the market opportunities that exist to make a change that could reduce your cost.

00;09;57;24 - 00;10;11;22

Jonathan Yantis

And so and then to just alert them, you know, we used to stumble upon these things, you know, and so I remember, you know, my co-founder stumbled upon a quarter million dollar opportunity, which was significantly more money than he made. Then he found out it had been out there for six to nine months and they just didn't know about it.

00;10;11;22 - 00;10;30;07

Jonathan Yantis

It was just kind of one of those things like this shouldn't be this way. But the other thing I think he really touched on, you know, the retail pharmacies are still reimbursed reimbursement, the inpatient pharmacies are pharmacies that most probably of our listeners aren't familiar with. And so when you're checked into the hospital, they use a lot of very expensive injectable drugs.

00;10;30;07 - 00;10;53;22

Jonathan Yantis

You know, vancomycin, you know, all of these all these all of these drugs that are not reimbursed from insurance. They're we've moved to the capitated payments model. So from the hospital's perspective, of they just need the the right drug at at the best cost to to cure the patient and then any sort of, you know, access that they receive from insurance, you know, is their margin.

00;10;53;22 - 00;11;08;28

Jonathan Yantis

And so they just need to reduce those costs. It actually made our life a lot easier to get the insurance reimbursement out of this piece. So it's like, you know, it's like, hey, we can we can make $10 or $100 drug or $1 off a $10 drug. But like, hey, now that's just cost. Let's go with a $10 drug.

00;11;08;28 - 00;11;33;25

Jonathan Yantis

It's going to solve the patient's problem. And as we were kind of talking before this podcast, as long as they don't come back, the patient has to come back. That's good news for the hospital. The cheapest, you know, best right solution is the right solution. Going forward. So that is factored in greatly to what we do and reduced a lot of kind of open up the opportunity and reduce some of the complexity around reimbursement because that's just yet another layer of how much how much am I going to receive for dispensing this drug.

00;11;34;01 - 00;11;50;18

Jonathan Yantis

But you may not be dispensing the most cost effective drug from a, you know, societal standpoint, but you're you're looking to optimize for the hospital. And I think, you know, what you're seeing in the capitated payments model, that to me is the right model going forward in general. This is just let's reduce the cost and care of the patients.

00;11;50;18 - 00;12;06;11

Kevin Smith

So saving money in medical care is a is a good thing. I think we can all agree for sure. Well, let's talk about the can you maybe describe what your product is, how it works? Like walk us through if someone was interested, what would you say to them about how to get involved?

00;12;06;23 - 00;12;27;02

Jonathan Yantis

You know, basically, if you're a hospital, pharmacy, you know, they know that things are very complicated. I think there's maybe a belief that no one can maybe help them with their problems or not. You know, maybe for some of our customers having adopted a shot. But but the truth is, we basically do most of the work for them.

00;12;27;02 - 00;12;46;15

Jonathan Yantis

We work with the wholesaler to get all their data. Basically, the only thing we need to know from a hospital is what accounts do you have and how are you classified as organization and what are what is your regulatory structure? Once we know that then we set everything up for them and then present them a dashboard, a real time dashboard so that they can go in and see like, Oh, I purchased all these drugs yesterday.

00;12;46;15 - 00;13;02;08

Jonathan Yantis

It wasn't the right drug. I need to send it back and get the right one, you know, here are all these opportunities I wasn't aware of. You know, it's monitoring and alerting for spend pattern changes. Some of them. You know, I remember we put this alert in place and I thought the alert was broken when we first started.

00;13;02;08 - 00;13;15;29

Jonathan Yantis

I mean, I see. And we had a we were receiving a drug incorrectly. It was costing us foreign and thousand a month you know, and it was just a, you know, if we didn't catch that until the end of the year, we were just lost the money. And so this was just real time monitoring. Hey, we have a problem here.

00;13;15;29 - 00;13;34;24

Jonathan Yantis

We have a problem right now. It's very expensive. We only have 30 days to correct it and or that money was gone forever. And so all of a sudden this was just like, hey, this, we need this. And so I think a lot of hospitals are very retroactive and their spend analysis and things like that, and they do a quarterly reviews and they find these things.

00;13;34;24 - 00;13;51;27

Jonathan Yantis

And so they correct them or there's something about a real time solution where you always know everything that's going on. We talk about it like owning your spend. So our customers own their spend. They know exactly where every dollar is going. They know every market opportunity the day it changes, and they know how to leverage their spend to get much better deals with suppliers.

00;13;51;27 - 00;14;06;25

Jonathan Yantis

And so now our customers are like, Hey, we're on top of this day to day problem. Where we used to spend all of our time with the head in the spreadsheets. Now we're out negotiating with suppliers and getting better deals. We know where we stand. We know our size and our spend and what we should be able to get.

00;14;07;05 - 00;14;25;14

Jonathan Yantis

And that's just a completely different mindset shift, you know? So I think a lot of folks, when we come in, they're like afraid to like, Oh, maybe we're going to automate a lot of their job away. What really happens is that those people become like they own their spend and they figure how to leverage it and they become like supply chain superstars.

00;14;25;22 - 00;14;41;00

Jonathan Yantis

And probably by the time this podcast comes out, we should be right about 40% of the academic medical center market, about 20% of the ID and market and expanding quickly. And so we've just had great success there and it's, it's been very exciting. And so, you know.

00;14;41;11 - 00;15;09;26

Jesse Goodwin

Jonathan, you and I have chatted before about the unique opportunity that sort of starting a company. Well, you didn't start the company within, but to be able to, to build a product within an environment like this and to sort of be able to go live in a real life use case. So can you speak a little bit about what that's meant for not only product development, but in terms of, you know, getting your start as a company?

00;15;10;06 - 00;15;24;03

Jonathan Yantis

It was huge. It was essential. I looking back, I don't know how we would have done it any other way. And, you know, we're talking about was like a lot of these outside companies or founders are like, hey, health care is a huge area that needs to be revolutionized. I could just go in there and figure it out.

00;15;24;03 - 00;15;50;04

Jonathan Yantis

From the outside. But it's the priorities. It's very difficult to understand how these hospitals operate from the outside. And I think that that so for us, you know, there are pressures of building something on the inside as well. I don't I don't want to deny that it's easy to build things on the inside of an institution. It is a lot easier, easier, way easier and way higher chances of success.

00;15;50;13 - 00;16;08;09

Jonathan Yantis

And that so really what we did was I was the only person that wasn't familiar with pharmacy in the room. We had a very small group of people. We had the highest level person in the room was Doctor Habeeb, you know, the former chief supply chain officer below that, we had the people that were responsible for the problem and nobody else.

00;16;08;09 - 00;16;23;10

Jonathan Yantis

And we just shut the door. We didn't talk about what we were doing and we just met multiple times a week and something about building with the customers, the people that are using it and they use it, they're like, hey, I don't like this. I don't need this. I do need this. How can you help me solve these problems?

00;16;23;17 - 00;16;49;29

Jonathan Yantis

And this this iterative, very fast back and forth was like, all right, we solve this problem. Now I want you to look at this overcharging problem. And we this is a big problem for our hospital. And so to be able to just rapidly iterate and interact with the people that need to be in the room and to honestly keep some of the other people out of the room that maybe have different competing priorities allowed us to just close the door and get to work and get this done.

00;16;49;29 - 00;17;10;22

Jonathan Yantis

And when we were done, we had something that worked really well for us incredibly well. And it turns out it works everywhere else as well. All the other academic medical centers, the large complex hospitals where some of the largest complex systems in the country now. And we didn't have to make too many changes in the model we put in place that work the workflows, the way we collaborate.

00;17;11;01 - 00;17;39;26

Jonathan Yantis

It's a highly collaborative team based model. That's still what we that's still the model we put in place with all of our customers. And so so it's not like, hey, we're going to set all these committee workflow up. But, you know, it's like, no where we have a very it's like a special ops team and we kind of bring them in to our way of thinking and operating, have all the right people in the room that make the clinic that need to make the right pharmacy decisions they know to go to the doctor or not if they need outside influence.

00;17;39;26 - 00;17;43;26

Jonathan Yantis

But otherwise we can this group of people right here can make an incredible impact.

00;17;44;04 - 00;17;56;15

Jesse Goodwin

And you got a built in Alpha Test site and you're able to launch your company with demonstrated savings that you could speak about from a health system. Right. And that's a really unique opportunity.

00;17;57;08 - 00;18;19;03

Jonathan Yantis

It really it really was. I mean, until we my whole thing was at first it was we wanted to create we wanted to I wanted help MPAC and I wanted to do something big here so I could go do something else. Let me see but this became so successful over that first year, you know, it was clear that like that's what was interesting for me.

00;18;19;03 - 00;18;36;05

Jonathan Yantis

So, you know, this is this is really my fourth significant invention. You know, before that, I had three others that were commercialize able to maybe not have been great companies or things like that. But I had they were they were good enough to be commercialized. But, you know, my mentality was like, I just want to make something new.

00;18;36;14 - 00;18;57;00

Jonathan Yantis

we went live in the summer of: 2018

00;18;57;06 - 00;19;14;24

Jonathan Yantis

I can't do this. I can't abandon this one. I have to see this through and do because if I can help this hospital, I can help these other hospitals. I just, at that point I was like, OK, I'm going to have to look into starting a company like there's just there's just it's the right thing to do. I'll never be able to live with myself if I go back and do something else.

00;19;14;24 - 00;19;39;20

Jonathan Yantis

So, so and so that kind of started that journey. Of like, hey, this could work for others. Since the company really got going right when the pandemic had, we had a lot of soul searching time. And it was Matt and I for a couple of years, just us, you know, just struggling. And a lot of that struggle was what who do we want to be and what type of company are we going to be and what are we not going to compromise on?

00;19;39;29 - 00;19;55;28

Jonathan Yantis

And you know, those early we're not going to compromise on. We're not going to market what we don't deliver. You know, we're not there's so many of those pieces that are so easy traps to fall into when you're desperate. And we were kind of desperate, but we just didn't compromise. And for a long time, it looked like wasn't going to work.

00;19;55;28 - 00;20;10;23

Jonathan Yantis

And then and then it really just started mushrooming. And we haven't changed that much. We stuck to our guns and, you know, stick to your guns. Anyone out there like if you know the right way to do something, don't compromise that.

00;20;12;25 - 00;20;14;10

Jonathan Yantis

It will eventually catch up.

00;20;15;05 - 00;20;38;03

Kevin Smith

That's fantastic. And so cool to hear stories like this. Well, it says on the website Quicksort, our X is a team of pharmacy and software experts working together to help hospitals win. What a great tagline. And the thing that stands out to me is it's pharmacy experts and software experts. Those are two separate things. But they're the together in your company very much together.

00;20;38;03 - 00;21;03;06

Jonathan Yantis

And we but we've always been together, right? We were together when we were a team. And I mean, I see and this was just a project. And so that dynamic, the majority of people that were on the team that created this are now at the company. And so that is and and then we have this is something about, you know, most software companies, if they were doing software support, they're going to hire some overseas support people and they're going to you're going to you're going to get them on the phone.

00;21;03;06 - 00;21;23;22

Jonathan Yantis

And it's gonna be a frustrating experience. You know, we decided like if our customers are going to talk to somebody, we want them talking to somebody who in their in their position who understands not just this part of supply chain, but the entire operation at their hospital and can help, you know, almost it's it's very consultative it's very expensive to provide this level of support.

00;21;24;01 - 00;21;47;16

Jonathan Yantis

But we've felt that it's essential to unlocking the greatest potential for our customers. And so we really only like to put them in front of, you know, experts that were in their position. And that has created something very special because they open up about almost anything to us. And we and because, you know, our pharmacists know how to communicate now with the engineering team.

00;21;47;16 - 00;22;11;11

Jonathan Yantis

And we have such a tight, you know, communication structure that we can build things internally, test them with our internal pharmacists and know that they're going to succeed in the marketplace or not. And then when we drop these products or these new features and, you know, we launched a big one shortage intelligence, you know, last fall, you know, within two months, it became our second most used feature in the entire program.

00;22;11;22 - 00;22;32;11

Jonathan Yantis

And I think that's what's been really amazing is to have that early testing feedback so that we've never launched something that didn't get immediate usage. The summer. We launched a new community platform so that we can chat with our customers in real time or asynchronously. We brought them together over, you know, tornado had a big Pfizer manufacturing plant the other day.

00;22;32;11 - 00;22;48;15

Jonathan Yantis

It caused all kinds of disruptions for our customers. They're dealing with nonstop supply disruptions. And so we are you know, we're able to pull all of them together, crowdsource all the information, all the shortage. Here's the products you need to worry about. Here's what you should be doing at your hospital. Here's all the information coming in from all over the world.

00;22;48;25 - 00;23;07;25

Jonathan Yantis

And like everyone's on the same page is an informed and knows exactly what's going on. And that is before that, all these hospitals were like, you may have to some friends at another hospital. What's going on? What's going on? Nobody knows. Nobody is going on. Everyone's in their own little silo. And then there's like wires the world doing this to me.

00;23;08;06 - 00;23;24;20

Jonathan Yantis

And now it's like oh, now we know what's going on in the world. Now we can get ahead of things and not just just have all these things coming at us. And that's just and that's created just incredible enthusiasm for our product. It just really awesome. Yeah.

00;23;24;20 - 00;23;41;16

Jesse Goodwin

So, Jonathan, you spoke about some new features that you've been adding and how does your company sort of set out their strategic plan in terms of deciding what new features needed to be added? And what do you see on the horizon for where you want to go? Yeah, only things you can share.

00;23;41;20 - 00;24;06;20

Jonathan Yantis

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we've got some incredible new things coming. So one thing we did this summer, we had an intern from Georgia Tech, and so he's he's working on a basically a license free way to know drug equivalency within the marketplace. And we've seen this is a is something that's been really blocking changes within the pharmaceutical market, which is to have a universal medication ID.

00;24;07;08 - 00;24;26;19

Jonathan Yantis

And so it's been essential to our product and our success. But we decided instead of keeping it as a proprietary thing, we're we're going to release this open source so that every hospital have access to these codes that they need to know, hey, these are all the same drugs. And we can interchange these drugs, you know, and keep this one idea in our system.

00;24;26;19 - 00;24;41;15

Jonathan Yantis

And it sounds you know, like like a small thing. The reason it hadn't been done before, I don't know. It should have been done 30 years ago. But, you know, that's just one example of something that we're just going to release and release as free to everyone because we think it can have a huge impact in the world.

00;24;42;06 - 00;25;06;05

Jonathan Yantis

We've got a ton more coming on our shortage intelligence services. We just launched an amazing heat map that shows real time, week by week shortage of information across the country. And so there a lot of it is really this collaborative. So my vision for this company is for it to be completely customer driven by their needs and that's why we're building this community.

00;25;06;05 - 00;25;39;00

Jonathan Yantis

That's why we're have these tight relationships. And so, you know, we know like the gateway to creating the greatest value in the future is going to become from that relationship and those ideas coming from these leading health systems that know where that next value could be unlocked if they had a partner that could help them unlock it. And so, you know, like so a try for us is to get out of our own has not think that we know everything and just keep that going and then verify everything early and often with them is are we building the right things?

00;25;39;00 - 00;25;56;24

Jonathan Yantis

And so we're setting up a customer advisory board for our company. We're bringing all the leaders from all these institutions and, you know, they really help. We want them to have immense input in our direction going forward. And so and that's how we make sure we really successful new features products and those sorts of things.

00;25;57;19 - 00;26;32;14

Jesse Goodwin

And your company, I mean, you spun out of MUSC and you're still located here in the Charleston region. Yeah. You know, and I have a goal, along with Dr. Cole, of really establishing this region as sort of an innovation hub, you know, in an Innovation hub. For the life sciences companies. So can you speak a little bit about what it's been like to grow a company in the Charleston region and the opportunities that you had and some of the struggles that that you've faced with, you know, keeping a company here rather than, you know, relocating to to another place?

00;26;32;22 - 00;26;58;05

Jonathan Yantis

Yeah, I think the best thing about Charleston is that you can convince people to move here. Like this is a great place to be. The lifestyle is amazing. And so from a recruiting standpoint, especially post-pandemic, you know, people are looking to leave certain regions and a lot of them are coming here. And so that that from a recruiting standpoint, a lifestyle standpoint, I'm was born and raised here.

00;26;58;05 - 00;27;25;22

Jonathan Yantis

I like living here. And so and our employees really love it here, too. There's less you know, funding opportunities available in Charleston for sure. You know, there's only so much of a developed Angel Network Angel of, you know, different capital firms. So that that's a little, little more difficult. There's also, you know, there's only so many just really top tier tech companies to look to here in Charleston.

00;27;25;22 - 00;27;44;27

Jonathan Yantis

So, you know, so that would be sort of some of the disadvantages. I I would also say, like you know, there's just not like the level of meet ups you might find in the Bay Area or something like that. You know, in the Bay Area, there's always like five incredible meet ups a night. You know, there's everyone's looking to start a company everywhere here.

00;27;44;27 - 00;28;06;02

Jonathan Yantis

People are looking to live well. And so I'd rather be here because I want to live well and our employees want to live well. So I think I think the lifestyle here is essential. And then you look at these different institutions and College of Charleston and, you know, I wish I was one of the university. I think we have a lot of the elements here.

00;28;06;02 - 00;28;23;23

Jonathan Yantis

But to me, the future and I look at the the remote work stuff that's going on right now and all of this, people people want to spend more time with their families. They want to work to live more, you know? And so but they still want to like great work. And so I just think Charleston has a really nice mix.

00;28;23;23 - 00;28;43;09

Jonathan Yantis

We're growing so fast. I've met so many incredible people here. And so I think it's a great place to start a company and to run a company and to live in. So but is not for all companies. You know, some sometimes you need to be in the Bay Area or one of these other, you know, jobs or, you know, if you're in the world of atoms, you need to be in L.A.

00;28;43;09 - 00;28;49;12

Jonathan Yantis

You know, and it just depends. But there's a lot of companies that can do quite well here. And there's obviously a lot of life science companies here.

00;28;49;12 - 00;28;54;16

Kevin Smith

I think some of those top tier tech companies are coming, too. I feel it's got to be on the way, you know.

00;28;54;21 - 00;28;55;23

Jonathan Yantis

Or we just have to make one.

00;28;56;07 - 00;29;11;09

Kevin Smith

Or even better yet! Fantastic. Well, innovation that streamlines business and helps those in need of receiving medical care better and faster. That's QuickSortRx in a nutshell. So Jonathan Yantis, thank you so much for stopping by, Innovatively speaking.

00;29;11;14 - 00;29;13;22

Jonathan Yantis

Thank you all. I really appreciate it. It's a great conversation.

00;29;13;24 - 00;29;14;08

Jesse Goodwin

Thank you.

00;29;16;18 - 00;29;37;14

Kevin Smith

You've been listening to the Innovatively Speaking Podcast with the Medical University of South Carolina. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the show, leave a rating and review to hear more innovative ideas and to share your own. Subscribe to the show or visit us on our web page. Web Dot MUSC Dot Edu Slash Innovation.

00;29;37;21 - 00;29;40;16

Kevin Smith

And remember, don't hesitate to innovate.