Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Forgeron.
Tom, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Growing up in San Diego, I always had a passion for surfing and healthcare. Little did I know that my passions would one day intersect to change my life and the lives of millions of people. Approximately 15 years ago while surfing with my good friend Roger, he started telling me about a product that he wanted to develop. Unlike most product pitches that happen between waves, this idea really hit home with me. Roger, being a wound care physician, and me owning a medical supply company that specialized in wound care supplies and vascular pumps, his idea tapped into my other passion, healthcare. Roger was describing to me a platform in which he would be able to input his patients’ records into a database with images to be able to track outcomes. I said, if we add some supply chain controls, we would have a great product. Roger, being an entrepreneur like me, developed a prototype on a Palm Pilot. We both immediately realized that the available technology was not ready for our product and we shelved the idea. However, we never stopped talking about it and always discussed ways of making it better.
Fast forward to April of 2017 a day in which I will never forget. I was standing in front of my house that my wife and I were closing escrow on the sale of in two days. My phone rings and I see it is Roger, who I have not spoken to in a few years. I answer the phone and the first words I hear Roger say are, “The technology is available. Want to talk?” The timing could not have been more perfect, as I now had the profit from the sell of my home to kick-start this new venture with Roger and I was at a crossroads in my career ready for a new challenge. Since that moment I have not looked back.
Today, I am the CEO of our company and have developed the product we talked about over so many waves, InteliWound.
Has it been a smooth road?
I would love to meet the startup that has had a smooth road, particularly a technology startup tackling an issue as complex as wound care management. Wounds are the outcome from many different causes. Things such as diabetes, vascular disease, trauma, and immobility are just a few of the etiologies or causes of wounds. Developing efficient workflows and algorithms that address every etiology for wounds has been a very difficult road, yet we have found meeting this challenge very rewarding.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Synergy Wound Technology was started to tackle complex and chronic wounds. Chronic wounds affect 1% to 2% of the population in developed countries, roughly the same prevalence as heart failure. Annually this costs Medicare, not including other payors, up to $96.8B, and this financial burden is expected to increase in parallel with the rapidly growing incidence of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes.
As a consequence of the rise in chronic wound prevalence, the demand for expert wound care is increasing. It is currently estimated that there is only one wound nurse for every 500 wound patients. With over 8.2 million wound patients in Medicare alone, this has created the need for a value-based and technology-driven solution.
InteliWound is a value based wound care management system developed to improve the delivery of wound care and reduce costs. InteliWound is a platform that allows the point-of-care clinician to assess, measure, and document a wound in as little as 3-5 minutes. From this assessment, InteliWound derives a proprietary score that accurately tracks the wound from assessment to assessment, as well as providing treatment suggestions through an experience-based algorithm. InteliWound provides physicians and clinical supervisors with real-time oversight through our web-application that is built on the cloud. When combined with supply chain automation, the cost savings can be dramatic. We recently had a customer tell us that InteliWound has saved them over 50% on their total wound care costs. Hearing feedback like this is why we developed InteliWound. Improving the delivery of wound care and reducing costs is our mission.
What has been the proudest moment of your career so far?
Developing InteliWound is definitely the proudest moment of my career. Together with my team, we developed a product many people said we couldn’t. We only started to commercialize InteliWound a short time ago, and in that time we have expanded into Argentina, South Africa, and the United States. It is amazing to have people from around the world see and immediately understand how InteliWound can improve the quality of life for so many people.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.inteliwound.com
- Phone: (619) 391-1744
- Email: tom@inteliwound.com
- Facebook: facebook.com/inteliwound
- Twitter: @SynergyWound
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