Entrepreneur: BeckonCall aims for better doctor-patient communication

This article originally appeared in the Phoenix Business Journal on March 11, 2016.

After spending 18 years in Silicon Valley, app designer Andrew Steele decided it was time to move to metro Phoenix and become CEO of a startup company focused on improving contact between patients and doctors.

The app, BeckonCall, is for patients who want to reach their doctors after business hours. Instead of getting an answering machine, patients connect to an on-call doctor through the app.

“There’s a lot of latency between the time a patient calls and the time their message is delivered to the doctor,” Steele said. “With live answering services, it’s relatively common for messages to not only take a long time to get delivered, but to get delivered incorrectly, and sometimes not get delivered at all.”

Steele and his partner, neurologist Dr. Jeffrey Becker, set out to solve the communication problem by connecting patients and doctors directly though a user-friendly experience.

When a patient needs to talk to their doctor after hours, they call the same number they normally would to connect with the doctor’s office. If their doctor uses BeckonCall, the call will be directed to the app’s platform. The platform leads the patient to a customizable “smart attendant,” then directs the patient to the proper answering service.

The BeckonCall platform delivers messages right away, before the patient hangs up.

“With our technology, we automate that entire process, so no human being is making the decision of how to forward that message after it comes in from the patient,” Steele said.

Steele said the app aims to streamline the explosion of mobile health apps.

“There’s no smooth, proactive or logical connection between all of those products that make it easy for the doctor,” Steele said. “The doctor is the one that has to take the data that all of those apps generate and apply it during care delivery.”

BeckonCall’s initial investment was just under $400,000 that was primarily given to the company by doctors interested in the product’s development. Beckon Call is generating revenue, although the executives declined to discuss it. The company also declined to discuss how many clients it had, but that those doctors manage “thousands of cases per month” on the Beckon Call platform, Steele said.

“There’s credibility that a doctor is involved and that he understands how to design a product that doctors are going to use every day,” Steele said. “The product is designed by a doctor, for doctors.”

Another reason for BeckonCall’s initial success is the positive relationship that Steele maintains with Becker.

“I feel blessed that Andrew has decided to come on to the team,” Becker said of Steele. “Since he has gotten involved, the growth of the business has been wonderful; I wouldn’t be here today without his involvement.”

Steele became motivated to join BeckonCall because he believed the company offered a solution to a problem.

“We’re all patients at some point,” Steele said. “It’s a problem that resonated with me, and I think there’s an opportunity for us to have a huge impact.”