What customer success means at BridgeHead

BridgeHead Software 25th Anniversary – an interview with Brendan O’Leary

As BridgeHead Software continues to celebrate its 25th anniversary, we asked our Solutions Engineer and Customer Success Programme (CSP) Lead, Brendan O’Leary, why BridgeHead’s success is reliant on much more than its own solutions.

In your own words what is the Customer Success Programme?

We developed the CSP to enable our customers to be successful. At BridgeHead, it’s important to us that our customers individually achieve their goals within their area of responsibility. This, of course, contributes to the overall success of the healthcare provider and means patients get the best possible experience.

I spend a lot of my time being a conduit between our customers and BridgeHead. One of my roles is to talk to customers about their challenges and how we might be able to support them. But, the CSP programme also goes beyond BridgeHead. We realise that BridgeHead solutions only contribute directly to a small part of our customers’ responsibility and that their success depends on the blending of technology across the healthcare landscape. It’s imperative that we know where BridgeHead’s solutions operate within the wider technology ecosystem.

One of the really important contributions that BridgeHead makes is its general level of expertise both within healthcare and IT; above and beyond its own solutions.

What drives you forward to do the best for customers every day?

I have always worked in customer-focused roles. It suits my personality. One of the joys of working with BridgeHead is that I’m surrounded by like-minded people within a company that has a genuine, long-term, customer-focused ethos.

In your view, what has been the most important innovation in healthcare in the last 25 years?

I disagree with the concept of a silver bullet in healthcare. Healthcare covers a vast territory, from basic sanitation (which has saved more lives than any other innovation) through to cutting-edge surgical techniques. Included in this mix are vaccinations and pharmaceuticals. There have been innovations in a diverse range of areas: some are high-tech, but limited by cost to a fortunate few; other, low-tech solutions that benefit many. A good example of a low-tech solution with massive impact is the use of drones to deliver medicines in hard to reach places in the Pacific Islands. Rather than the patient or clinician travelling days over rugged terrain, a drone delivers the medicines cheaply within hours.

Your proudest achievement while with BridgeHead?

Starting our relationship with MEDITECH 18 years ago, which continues to this day. I clearly remember our first meeting with MEDITECH and hearing about the problems they were facing. At the time, it was taking their customers 24 hours to back up their data; something we knew should only take 30 minutes. Since then, our organisations have been on a fascinating journey together, working with hospitals across the globe to guarantee that their MEDITECH environment is fully protected and recoverable in the event of a system outage, data corruption, loss or major disaster.

Describe what BridgeHead means to you in 15 words or less.

A dedicated team working together to drive value for healthcare providers and their patients.

What are your hopes for the healthcare industry?

The healthcare industry is struggling with more patients and less clinical staff. My hope is that technology can play a major role in improving healthcare, but it needs to work at several levels. There is the purely technical level, where technology is used for diagnosis, treatment and healing – for example, radiotherapy machines that can focus on a tumour, minimizing the damage to adjacent healthy tissue. Then there are the enabling technologies, such as HealthStore®, that allow clinicians speedy access to patient data, enabling them to spend more quality time with their patients.