Overview

In the early 2000s, Ortech founders Jeff Guerin and Sean Volkaert worked in clinical research collecting and analyzing patient outcome data for orthopaedic surgeons

It all started with simply wanting to work more efficiently. We were in charge of data collection and reporting at the hospital. We had five world-renowned surgeons carrying out a high volume of surgeries, speaking at conferences all over the world, conducting ongoing studies, as well as teaching and training other surgeons.

All record-keeping was paper-based, and we had to manually enter information into excel spreadsheets. This required a large team, and even with that team we were always under the gun, struggling to meet deadlines for abstracts and papers.

After a few years of this, we thought – there has to be a better way.

We began creating a local database to improve efficiency and provide better reporting. Surgeons took interest and wanted to see what we were doing, and we provided them with copies of the growing database to get their feedback and help us make improvements to the system.

Our surgeons supported us because they liked what we were doing. Eventually, we were encouraged by our employers to establish Ortech and provide our solution at scale to healthcare providers.