At WebInterstate Inc., mobile imaging has carried their vision far

Like most entrepreneurs, software developers Brad Nelson and Ken Kern were searching for a niche that was, as Nelson put it, "big enough to yield a profit and sustain growth, but far enough off the radar so that big companies weren't involved."

They found it in an industry that barely registers a blip on the screen. In fact, it was so off the radar that neither of the two business partners had ever heard of it before they got involved.

Nelson, 56, and Kern, 40, are the proprietors of WebInterstate Inc., a Faribault business that develops software to automate the ordering, accounting and image delivery processes for the mobile X-ray, CT-scan and ultrasound industry.

The what?

"We hear that a lot," said Kern, who admits he was just as clueless about the mobile imaging industry before 2002. That's when he first heard about a Twin Cities-based mobile X-ray company that was looking for ways to automate its internal operations.

WebInterstate is an emerging business that serves about 300 medical companies nationwide which take their imaging services to folks who are immobile or otherwise confined: residents of elder care facilities, home health care patients, and guests of your local jails and prisons.

The choice has paid off handsomely for Nelson and Kern, with WebInterstate's annual revenue bounding from $196,000 in 2006 to $600,000 in 2009. So far this year, the gross is on track to reach $750,000.

"There were a couple of years when we took no salaries," Kern said. They kept food on the table with some of the conventional software development consulting projects with which they had launched their business in 1999.

Industry finally caught up

There was a simple reason for the initial lack of success -- and for the lack of competition from some of the big players in the software business: It seems that much of the mobile imaging industry was clinging to their old manual business processes.

X-rays and other medical imaging were delivered to doctors via mail or courier, medical information was exchanged person-to-person, and ordering, billing and filing were done on paper.

"The whole industry was like that," Kern said. "And a lot of companies still are."

The upshot: Annual revenue bounced around the $200,000 level as Nelson and Kern scrambled to promote their software solution, dubbed MediMatrix, via trade show appearances, online demonstrations and monthly mailings.

But then "the industry caught up with our vision," Nelson said. The speed and reliability of wireless technology improved, costs moderated and competition in the mobile medical imaging business was intensifying, pushing companies toward automation to speed their services and lower expenses.

Oh yes, and the aging of America -- we've become leading economic indicators at last, fellow geezers! -- was hoisting demand and promising long-term growth.

The result is a client list serving upwards of 2,000 facilities in 18 states.

Nelson and Kern started out with a conventional software development firm working on a project basis for corporate clients -- specifically a target market of small-to-midsized businesses.

Clients praise MediMatrix

The mobile imaging industry not only fit that criterion, but the software Nelson and Kern developed for their clients offers "a service that improves patient care by dramatically speeding up the process" of delivering and examining medical imaging, Nelson said.

Their clients apparently agree: "The MediMatrix system makes running a portable company much easier and our facilities love it," Kathy Barry, chief operating officer of Source Diagnostics in Westerville, Ohio, told the company.

A note from Roy McGahee, president, and Rich Risor, managing partner of Advanced Portable X-Ray in Fayetteville, Ark., was even more glowing: "Rarely does something exceed our expectations, but we have to say that the people [and their MediMatrix] product have done just that," they wrote.

"The product makes ordering and workflow virtually seamless and the radiology group that reads the exams have the reports back sometimes before our techs get loaded up to leave the facility," they added.