It’s a Mobile World (Part 1/2): It’s Prime Time for Healthcare

Better, smarter, faster. The future of connected health care relies on a powerful digital ecosystem and robust neural network to drive better diagnostics, intelligent operations, and seamless care anywhere. Join us as we talk to the experts about transformational road maps for this evolving landscape, what's working, what's needed, and how we get there together. Welcome to health care on air presented by Verizon. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to health care on air by Verizon. I'm your host, Robin Goldsmith, global lead for health innovation and strategy here at Verizon. So today, we're gonna dive into a topic that we've touched on in several episodes, and that's this idea of the move move of health care to more outside the traditional settings of health care. So think the home, on the go, with a tablet or a device. And with that shift, we're seeing more and more of a need for technology and really connected devices from pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, hospitals, health care systems, pretty much any player in the health care system. So to take it a step further, this idea of purpose built devices, truly custom devices that fit the needs of all those companies I just mentioned, is rising. Really, truly custom, purpose built devices. And we're gonna talk about that with someone who is a true expert on this topic, my friend, Robert Morcos, CEO of Social Mobile. Robert, welcome to the show. Thanks, Robert. I've always enjoyed speaking to you one off about health care innovation. I'm glad we get to do it a little bit more formal setting today. Absolutely. So why don't we kick off with a little bit about Social Mobile? Okay. Yeah. Social Mobile, we are, we've been in business since twenty eleven, and we are one of fifteen Google Android Gold partners. We're one of ten based in the US and the only one focused on private label Android innovation. So there's plenty of groups that you guys would know. Everyone's familiar with the Android ecosystem. We're the only one that focuses on designing products from concept to market, on a private label aspect. Got it. So as you might know, I love an origin story, and you're a young guy. I'm I'm very curious to hear the the true Robert Morko's origin story of why you decided to enter into a space that's filled with the, you know, a lot of big names from mobility, a lot of large Fortune five five hundred companies, and you bootstrapped a company down in Miami, Florida to build this out. And I'm I'm just curious kinda what was the catalyst for you to make that move and start the company? So, I I moved to, I was born in Amman, Jordan, and I moved here to Miami when I was three. I'm the oldest of five kids, you know, single mother. It all has to start somewhere. Yep. And, you know, I I knew early on just watching our mom take care of all the kids that, you know, things had to gee things had to change, and I had to be the one to do it. So, as I started getting into different businesses when I was younger and, the year was two thousand, I was fifteen in high school, I quickly learned as mobile devices were becoming more and more available that you can make money buying used devices. And at the time, there really wasn't a market for that. There was nothing. People had them on shelves. So one of my friend's fathers was very big in that business and that, you know, essentially, one of the, like, first groups that, pioneered that industry of the refurbishing and selling off into Latin America at the time. And he essentially taught me the tricks of the trade. So I ended up building a business doing just that when I was fifteen in high school. And, you know, I ran it throughout my entire time there. I got a scholarship, went to college. When I got out of college, I said, you know, I know exactly what to do. I'm gonna go back into I can build phones from the ground up and, hence, the name Social Mobile. We found that very quickly, not as easy as you think. Yep. And and then, you know, from there, we eventually changed and pivoted multiple times. As you mentioned, we're still, you know, a bootstrapped company to today. And we've ended up changing the business model several times from just a consumer cell phone brand, our own, to a private label consumer brand to an enterprise consumer brand. And now today, the focus is even more verticalized to private label enterprise for the health care vertical. Yeah. I was gonna say you you've worked across many, many verticals, but it seems that you're you really have identified a gap, and and that gap seems to be more and more in health care. Can you speak to that a bit? Yeah. There's as a lot of innovation going into health care right now. You know, it's one of the largest industries in the world. And as you mentioned, we've worked in across a lot of different industries, whether transportation, real estate, retail, food delivery. One of the largest one largest ones that we've seen continue to adopt over the last five years or so has been health care. As data becomes more and more important as, you know, real time results need to be pulled, and we've seen significant innovation in that area. So that's been where we've put all our focus. Yeah. I mean, we met I I forget which health care conference we met, but it was kinda serendipitous. It's, I at I think it was HIMSS or the health show, and and and I saw on on your in your booth kind of all the different times types of form factors. So, you know, for the for the audience, you know, when we say purpose built devices, what does that really mean? And kinda take me through kind of the, you know, a customer has a use case, and I know and I've I know some of the ones that that you're working on or have worked on. So company x comes to you, says, Robert, I wanna build, you know, that I've got a a vaccine. I wanna do that. Maybe let's use that example. How does kind of it it go from concepts to completion and off the shelf and into that customer's hand and ultimately, you know, customer facing? It's a lot to answer there, Robin, but I'm going to I'm gonna try to simplify it. My friend. Well so, essentially, these large organizations in health care, are looking to bring something to market, something that they already have, a new business, looking to streamline something. And it just doesn't make sense that they would do that with the same, you know, device that you would walk into a Verizon Wireless store and grab off a shelf for one person. They need something that's purpose built that addresses the concerns they have, and the concerns are significant. Right? Not just from the security, longevity, supply chain, every aspect. You know? The the enterprise is completely different than the consumer model. Right? What we realize is there really is no one size fits all solution, and the way organizations are doing it today is just that. They're taking some consumer device that's made, and they're spending significant money, time, resources into retrofitting it to work in that specific use case. So, you know, it's the whole square peg round hole. Eventually, you might get it in, but it's gonna take some significant power to get in. Is it the most efficient? Of course not. So, and I'll give you, you know, another example, like, just to be specific. Think of a large CGM provider that's got millions of users. Does it make sense for them to buy, you know, a a million off the shelf phones from a Verizon Wireless store and spend significant resources? No. They have the size. They have, you know, the notoriety. They've got the demand. They should have something purpose built to exactly what they want. So something that you manage, something they could deploy across multiple countries so that they have, you know, uniformity in the deployment, the look, the feel, the aesthetic, the different things that they have that they need to properly get that out. And it's crazy to think about about it, but most of these companies today do just that. We're seeing a big shift as, you know, they it's to get to what they want, they're spending so much money, and it's still not perfect. And you can get that done for significantly less. So the way we do it is we end up speaking to them and trying to get a better understanding early on of what exactly do are are we solving for. You know, there's lots of user studies. There's lots of on-site visits, talk to people that use the devices in different use cases to understand what are we solving today, and then also where is this business going in three to five years? We're very selective in the companies that we work with. We wanna solve something long term. We don't wanna just trade a bunch of devices today. It has to make sense for both organizations the way we take this partnership approach. So we wanna build something that's future proof that works today and is where you need it to be in a few years. And, also, in a few years, if there's something coming down, that you know, something coming down that you need incorporated to work with something, we wanna think that through, and then we wanna help provide something, that solves that need because we don't wanna go through the exercise of making a product multiple times if we don't absolutely have to. So I just wanna touch on something you said there. First of all, you're selective in the companies you work for. So I took from that you wanna work with companies long term and not just kinda one and done and move on to the company. That that accurate? Yeah. Generally speaking, we don't have anything, like, off a shelf we're gonna sell to you today. We need to take a partnership approach. We have to invest significant time, resources to make sure we develop something. And in our business, you know, we're not, looking for just, like, engineering resources or being paid to consult and build something that never gets to market. We wanna solve real needs, and we wanna work with companies that are, you know, adamant and very, you know, focused on solving those needs. So we look for specific partners that are solving, you know, specific use cases, and we join them and partner with them to be able to deploy that. Hence, you know, all the different products you see behind me all started there. You know, you start with a sheet of paper. Well, what are we looking to solve in a room, and then you go through the different process, the regulatory, the design, the engineering, every aspect, all the way to getting it to market. And then there's it doesn't end there. There's constant you know, there's continuous improvement in future iterations of products that have to be addressed. So you're not gonna get that from something off the shelf. You need a partner to do that because, in the, area that we're playing, the you know, it's very things change, and you need results, and you need to be able to make modifications quickly to drive the results. Yeah. It just kinda made me think about, you know, health care is is so cash strapped coming out of the pandemic. You know, the the margins are are very thin. I guess that opens up an opportunity and a challenge for you. So it's probably e probably equal challenge and opportunity to to kind of go into the niche and provide something potentially less expensive, than than the big, you know, big players in the space and and really use your expertise to build that, you know, purposeful device. Can you kinda talk to that and how you've been handling that? Ultimately, the different companies that we work with today are doing something. They're they're taking some before we meet them, they're in business. It's not necessarily startup, like, just starting from, you know, ground ground zero. They're they're they're in business, and they are, you know, ninety nine out of a hundred times using some consumer product off the shelf that was purpose built. That's already the most inefficient way to do this. Of course, it makes sense if you're in an MVP phase just trying to get a viable product to market and test, and we're gonna, you know, retrofit ten or a hundred or five hundred or a thousand machines and just trying to get some, information. But, you know, the ones that we work with tend to be a a much bigger scale and significantly more mature in their business. And it's all about just explaining and going through the total cost of ownership. You know, from a total cost of ownership perspective, we've seen, you know, sixty percent, average forty percent, but we've seen as high as sixty percent with clients. Yep. And yet you speak to any CFO or any strategy officer, they'll tell you it's all about TCO. You need to look at it from, you know, a a a more a a more granular level to understand, you know, what are the costs. So in the groups we work with, it's all about just painting that business case, and it ends up, you know, working more times than not. For some of the other groups, whenever you talk to, like, more individualized and they're like, you know, this may be five dollars over my budget and not see the whole picture. There are groups that see it that way, of course. And those are not, you know, the the those are not the partners we're looking to work with. Gotcha. So why do you think I you know, I have my own, you know, thoughts about this. I mean, there's why do you think health care as a vertical that you're heavily engaged in now and you're seeing exponential growth? Why do you think it is that there's been this rise of the need for purpose built devices, you know, when it comes to I'd love to get some examples. I know you're working on some pretty unique unique offerings. I mean, do you think it's because of, you know, what I touched on earlier that just, you know, there's a shift to the home, and they've gotta have more mobile app you know, mobile technology in the hands of the consumers? I'd love your thoughts on that. Yeah. So I think, again, since you've seen you you saw what happened in twenty twenty, and it just seems that we're in a more mobile world these days. Yeah. And the proliferation of connecting everybody everywhere all the time, that really sped it up. So you've seen industries completely shift overnight. You know, older industries, age old industries that have completely shifted, into a mobile first product connected. We need the data. We need to be able to do we need to be able to pull in data. We need to be able to, you know, stay connected. And, you know, it it just a big example is the, the CGM industry. You know, that's historically been a, I don't know, a nonsmart device, so to say. Right? Yep. And that's completely shifted. Everyone's moved to a smart connected mobile device to run that business case. There's different ones that you've seen as, you know, it's it doesn't cost much money to connect someone, and the data and the results that you can pull out of that, shift business shift industries. So I think you've seen people be more willing to invest and double down investments in those now because they think about it more strategically, as I mentioned before, CFO, strategy officers, where, yes, it's a hundred bucks today, two hundred bucks today, but what is this worth to us in year three, five, ten? So I I jumped in. I I'm I'm peppering you with the questions, my friend, but I I I wanna take a step back. I'm I'm just I was thinking, you know, about how you started and your story and and kind of this synergy of this mobile as you said, mobile first shift we're seeing across the industry. And it it just seemed you were kind of you've been building this business, but the economic, you know, macro trends really kinda went in your favor. And what did you what have you been doing since, you said, twenty eleven you found it? I mean, laying these, you know, this whole ecosystem of of building a device, there's so I know there's so much that goes into it from your factories overseas to to the prototypes, to the certification with the carriers. I mean, that is how long did it take you to really build all that infrastructure for social mobile to get from there to where you are now to really build at scale in this in this niche that you've really built out? I know it's a a packed question in there again. Sure. Well well, first, let me say it's in everybody's favor, not just mine or social mobiles. Yeah. Products are improving every day, efficiency across products. Everything's being connected. Data, you know, improves. It brings down the cost of everything over time. Right? So it's it's a big improvement for everyone, what what we see. In terms of the overall you know, obviously, starting the business in twenty eleven with a few dollars, there were hiccups, and nobody wanted to talk to us. Right? And it's it it was not it was not easy. And then as we started, you know, pivoting and changing the business model and we got through twenty fifteen, we really hit a stride. And that was a big stride for us. That was, you know, a couple million devices that year. So that was that was big, and we were able to hit scale. And it was, you know, comparable device is still what we do today to what we put in the market today. But as we shifted the real business from, you know, just mobile devices to enterprise mobile devices, that was twenty eighteen. And as you know, Robin, working with the large scale clients that we work with today, you know, specifically in health care or defense, another area that we that we work in, those are not easy. Those groups take, you know, years to contract. So we started in eighteen and it really hit stride and was, you know, obviously sped up by COVID twenty twenty. And yeah. Well, hopefully hopefully, that answers, but, you know, there's obviously some some hard times to begin as we tried to shift, but I think we found a good niche in fifteen that we then pivoted in eighteen. And, you know, since then, we've been in the same business since twenty eighteen, which is private label enterprise deployments. Yeah. No. I love what you said about this benefits everyone, not just social mobile because it it it is. I mean, we're seeing in every industry. I mean, it's just everything is going to to to a mobile first approach. Okay. We're gonna pause the conversation with Robert right there, and we'll pick it up next week. In the meantime, there's links below for all of our content wherever you access your podcast via Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. And if you wanna find the video versions of our content, please go to health care On Air by Verizon. Until next time. Take care.