Making it work
The company is applying learnings from scaling back MC support to its cloud-based medical software model in 2021, which the founders point to as a huge international opportunity.
Cork healthcare software and solutions company MCS Tech is looking to leverage its years of healthcare know-how to enter a market many times the size of Ireland’s healthcare sector after winning a significant new contract in the country.
The company is a new software company founded in 2021 by Nick Condon Jr. and Fiachra O’Driscoll, but takes inspiration from MC Support, the medical billing company founded by Nick Condon Sr. in 2015.
The idea for MCS Tech came about when Mr Condon retired and his son and Mr O’Driscoll recognised the need for “new technology in the market”, Mr O’Driscoll said.
MCS Tech, which posted revenue of €245,000 last year, sells its home-grown software and cloud-based solutions to private healthcare providers in Ireland looking to improve their revenue cycle management.
The company’s software helps healthcare providers track pending and ongoing transactions across various tiers of their business, and in some cases is replacing the traditional paper-based model that many hospitals still rely on partially or fully.
Fact-finding
Founders: Fiachra O’Driscoll and Nick Condon, 2021
Number of staff: 7
Turnover in 2023: 245,000 euros
“Many departments within the hospital are quite siloed,” O’Driscoll says. “What they really needed was one solution that could bring their entire revenue cycle together into one easy workflow.”
This cloud-based revenue management software accounts for the majority of the company’s revenue and represents its biggest opportunity for international expansion.
“We’ve built a hospital-agnostic platform that is very suited to the Irish market,” O’Driscoll said, while also outlining a rough timeline for expansion into other markets, particularly Germany, which he noted is a €400 billion market the company is eager to enter.
O’Driscoll said the United States, with its huge private healthcare market of 1.2 trillion euros, was an even more attractive prospect.
He said capturing even a small portion of this market would solidify the company’s future, and that the company aims to enter the market within 18 months.
Aiming to double the number of employees
The investigation into other markets comes as a result of research carried out in collaboration with the company by Enterprise Ireland (EI), which has categorised the company as a high potential emerging company, which has identified potential growth markets for the company.
“They’re absolutely fantastic,” O’Driscoll said.MCS Tech has also benefited from being included in EI’s New Frontiers program, which identifies scalable start-ups that have the potential to provide job opportunities in the future.
The company has grown to seven employees and aims to more than double that number to 15 next year, while revenue is expected to more than double this year to 650,000 euros.
Much of that confidence comes from the recent signing of a multi-year contract with Bon Secours, the state’s largest private healthcare provider, to replace the software at its five hospitals, starting in Galway in June and with a full rollout by October.
The company is a long-term partner of the hospital group and is currently in discussions with several other hospitals with the aim of expanding its technology to more healthcare settings in the near future.
Bon Secours plans to launch a new electronic health record project early next year, and O’Driscoll said the project will integrate directly with the company’s software suite once the records are fully digitised.
He said they were in discussions with several other private providers and had also approached the HSE.
Working alongside the cloud-based software solution is the ‘Sign It’ product, which is set to grow in the Irish and UK markets, aiming to speed up hospital admissions by capturing the patient’s signature on the way to the hospital, helping staff manage patients and enabling them to be seen more quickly.
This Making It Work article has been produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland.
