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Reflections on 2016: Brad Brooks, TigerText

This holiday season, we are again sharing the reflections on 2016 from Southern California's technology ecosystem. Today's contribution is from Brad Brooks, the co-founder and CEO of TigerText, which provides clinical communication solutions for the healthcare industry, and also co-founder of anonymous social media app Whisper. You can see all of our holiday reflections here.

What's was biggest news from you or your‏ firm this year?

Brad Brooks: The biggest news from TigerText this year is that we're evolving from what was a pure secure messaging product to a comprehensive clinical communications platform. Our solution has a variety of healthcare-specific features that offer hospitals and health systems a closer look into the best ways to optimize their current communications workflows. TigerText introduced TigerFlow, which comprises a set of healthcare specific features that optimizes existing communication workflows and enhances collaboration among care teams. These features allow members of the care team to look up and message on-call specialists, initiate phone calls to colleagues with a single tap from a message thread, and provide real-time visibility for when messages have been sent, delivered and read. The introduction of TigerFlow is our biggest news since launch.

What's the biggest lesson you learned this year?

Brad Brooks: The biggest lesson I learned this year is our need to become more immersive with respect to healthcare workflows. Our ability to impact workflows is way bigger than anything I could've anticipated three years ago. We believe this is a $100 billion cost savings opportunity across the healthcare industry and will simultaneously improve patient outcomes. One of our clients generated over $6m in cost savings this year, while another accumulated over $200,000 in savings in just eight weeks.

We have made a big push this year to bolster our team with healthcare industry expertise to help provide our customers with exceptional outcomes. To that end, we brought in Kelli Castellano as Chief Marketing Officer, formerly with NextGen Healthcare, and Kirk Paul Kirkman as President of the TigerText Client Organization, from athenahealth, to drive our healthcare integration.

What's your favorite technology gadget, device, or innovation you ran across this year?

Brad Brooks: I'd say Amazon Echo is my favorite gadget of the year. I think voice-activated devices have huge potential for healthcare and the ability to have a very positive impact on hospitals and health systems. In terms of enhancing clinical communications, voice-activated devices can be integrated into enterprise-wide platforms to automate the information retrieval process and enhance clinical outcomes across the care continuum.

Finally, what do you think will have the biggest impact on the technology industry in 2017?

Brad Brooks: Locally, I think Snapchat's IPO is going to spawn a massive ecosystem in the Southern California tech community. In healthcare, I think the impact of mobility is still in its infancy as far as the enterprise is concerned. While it has consumed so much consumer behavior I think we are just beginning to see it on the enterprise side, and it's something we will see much more of in 2017.

Brad Brooks is an accomplished entrepreneur with a successful track record of investing in, building and scaling companies in the technology and media spaces. He currently serves as co-founder and CEO of TigerText, the nation's leading provider of clinical communication solutions for the healthcare industry, and is also the co-founder of anonymous social media app, Whisper. Previously, Brad was President of DIC Entertainment, an international children's media company, which he acquired with Bain Capital from the Walt Disney Company in 2000. Brad helped grow DIC Entertainment from less than $10 million in revenue to more than $80 million in revenue in just 5 years and took the company public on the London Stock Exchange at a valuation of $200 million. Prior to that, Brad worked for investment banking corporation Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette.