Cancer Survivor Creates Unique Medical Business Niche

A personal health crisis sparks a new venture that's changing the world of medicine

"Mary has cancer and needs a mastectomy immediately."

"Picking up the phone and hearing my wife's doctor utter these words cut through me like a knife," remembers Ed Purkiss, who encouraged his wife, Mary, to get an unusual lump in her breast checked out in the winter of 2000, just to be safe.

Terrified, the couple - then owners of a successful call center with more than 500 employees, and parents to three children under age 10 - didn't know where to turn. Less than three weeks after finding the lump over the holidays, she was on the operating table having a mastectomy.

The healing process, and resulting reconstruction, took more than two years, with Mary needing six major surgeries.

"As we cancer patients - and our families-know all too well, you get pretty well acquainted with doctors' offices, waiting rooms and examination tables during your cancer journey," says Mary, noting she and Purkiss ended up selling their business to focus on their family during the ordeal.

It was while in treatment, however, that the couple noticed something rather odd - doctors were being torn away from the business of saving lives due to the everyday hassles of running their medical practice more often than any of us would like.

"For several years, we and our children got to know all too well the perils the medical industry faced with impending mandatory regulations, including the movement toward electronic records - and how it directly impacted patient care at the scariest times in our lives," says Mary.

Did it really have to be that way though? According to the Purkisses, not at all!

"Armed with experience in running a highly efficient business and comfortable with rapidly changing technology, as I healed, we actually got friendly with some doctors and eventually ended up as paid consultants to radiation oncology practices," says Mary, who quickly put a stop to outside tech companies charging her docs 20 times as much as they should for simple storage, upkeep and usability of medical records and information.

By 2008, the Purkisses had a good grip on the process-not to mention a good handle on Mary's cancer, now in remission - and were increasingly handling their doctor clients' technology needs, as well. The time seemed right to launch their own venture: Iron Medical Systems.

The cloud company allows physicians to work securely anywhere from any device. The system is built to run efficiently and backs up constantly. The cost of the system is lower than if doctors bought the hardware themselves, and tried to comprehend it all.

"By the end of this spring, we project more than 70 clients across the country - so many that we are expanding to an additional data center in New Jersey to accommodate our growing list of East Coast doctors," says Mary.

According to Mary - still head over heels for her care-giving husband - Purkiss has been programming since high school and brings the technology savvy to the business. According to Purkiss, Mary brings the vision.

Through her own years-long cancer battle, Mary is now motivated to ensure that no one else has to go through what her family did-and that doctors are better armed with secure technologies so that they can focus on what really matters - patients and their care.