>> Narrator: Live (upbeat music playing) from Boston, Massachusetts. It's The Cube! Covering Red Had Summit 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of the Red Hat Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, we are joined by Andre Baumgart and Dorothee Rhein Straub of Swiss-based easiER AG; easiER AG is a Swiss-based emergency room management company. Dorothee tell us about the idea, where it started. >> I'm an MD. And working in emergency rooms for several years now. And I thought it's annoying how people have to wait if they want to be seen by a physician. And I thought, if I am able to make an appointment for a headrest or just reserve a seat in a movie, it should be able to make an appointment for an physician even in an emergency. And that's why I came up with the idea; it's like checking in in a hotel. It's so easily done on your phone and I shared my ideas with my partners, Andre and Kai, and they thought it's something worthwhile to pursue. That's how it came along. >> So, you're physicians and you saw this, a problem from the doctors' side, from the providers' side. >> Actually, I thought problem from the patients' side 'cause I'm trying to think for patient. And I'm more relaxed if I have a problem, myself, I'm more relaxed if I can sit at home and wait for an appointment or if I know that one of the physician will see me today; instead of trying to get there and just be sitting around an emergency room and waiting area. >> And what about the provider side, though? What is it like, for you too, as a physician, trying to make sure you're seeing all the patients that need you? >> I think one of the good things about this app is as well I can schedule my day, I can tell my employees what they will be expecting what kind of patients, I can trigger or schedule the workload as well. And you can keep in touch with your patients and I think that's a very important thing, to be in touch with your patients and your employees. That's one thing, too. >> So that was the problem you were trying to solve. >> Dorothee: Yeah. >> So, tell me, after she shared this idea with you, so then where did you go next? What was the next process in the, the next step in the process? >> After we discussed what to do with it, and we selled it internally to the hospitals management but, unfortunately, due to budgets and due to other projects strategically, they decided not to do it. And then we said, "hey, it's such a great idea "to have a booking.com-like emergency room "scheduling system that we should follow this, "right, and we should do it?" And then we said, "okay, let's start our own thing." And we discussed with whom you could do it and we found Kai as a perfect partner. And we said, "okay, let's do it together." And so the company started, essentially, and that was the foundation of easiER AG, then. Yeah? >> And then, and as you said, you couldn't find necessarily, the money, the backing at first. So, then you said, "where do we go, "where do we really now take this to the next level? And how, how did you get involved with Red Hat? >> I know Red Hat for quite some time through the Open Source community. I, myself, did development in the Chablis community. So, I know, Red Hat quite well for several years. So I know that the stack and the technologies they used evolved over time and now, with the announcement of these self-serve open-shift platforms , this was a, actually, or is a revolution for the technology side. And then, I saw last year, the innovational announcement and I- >> The light bulb went off. >> Right. And then I said, actually we tried for several months to find a partner that could support us in a very structured and modern way. And then, I said okay, let's try this. They are a big company, maybe we are too small for them but I emailed the innovational people and I got feedback and we matched for a discovery session. And the people were so nice, so engaging, so challenging, also, that in the end we came out with the plan for this innovational app. >> So, share with us a little bit about those early days, as you said, they were challenging you. What kind of questions were they asking? Because that is the whole point, is that they are trying to figure out what your minimum viable product could look like. So what kind o' questions were they asking you? How were they pushing you forward? >> I think you have to answer that. (laughing) >> Well, discovery session is there to really validate that the solution is sound that it has a market potential and that that you have a potential to solve this within a short time. In form of a minimum viable product, in order to show that this prototype really solves the problem and Red Hat has the technology then to scale this up to a really market solution. And that was a struggle to really validate, is this MVP able to do within a short time, A? And then, they challenge us as people, you know, are these guys really, can they do that? And can they market it in the end? Because, I mean, doing it for fun might be nice for some time but it's not really our goal. And that was the first challenges they made, then we did conceptualize the user journey from a medic perspective and also from a user perspective, patient perspective, and then we found out, okay, this might make sense to do it in an innovation lab matter, okay? And this was really a very sound approach. We had half a day for workshop, and it was actually perfect to map our ideas, to map the criteria they, you have for this approach, and then and we found together. Yeah? >> So, so, after the discovery process and persuading, I guess, the Red Hat people that you are the right people, that you are, in fact, the right team to bring this product to fruition. How did it work? What were you actually doing at your time at the lab? >> We went to Waterford, Ireland, for three days. Normally, the innovation labs, are, I think, three or four weeks, so that was really special for us. We went there, Andre, me, we had three developers of our own at the site and I think, about 12 people from Red Hat from, I think the best ones they really could get us. And we started early in the mornings, the whole day was scheduled, we had a, we built our case we wanted to do. And, you have to help me with the right words, >> Yeah, we did, essentially, what is called an event-storming; event-storming is what happens, what is really the app doing, step by step, in terms of a user experience, from the patient and the hospital or the doctors side. And then, this event-storming leads to a big board of what is happening as a process and you do that iteratively four or five times during one or two days in order to really engage all of the different levels of people from the developer to the business owner. As well as from the Red Hat side as as from our side of developers, so everybody's engaged in this process. And this is, I think, the innovative idea that you do not have a waterfall like, some people sit together and do it and then, you hand it over to the developers. You bring them together and you discuss it and make the case their own thing. And then they are fully engaged in realizing the product. And that was really the innovative part. >> When you told me that we are going to be on the innovation lab, I thought, "why me? What shall I be doing there?" There are all tech guys, I don't understand a word you are saying that's nothing really for me and, but I really saw it through quite fast 'cause it really makes sense that the business partners or the person who has the idea hat is there, 'cause you can really interfere very well and very fast and get to the point, what is needed. And it was really, it made sense to be there the whole time. >> It is very important that because you could see that sometime the ideas were flowing apart from the original business idea and that we were all people in the room together could ultimately control in every direction where this is heading and so, we had a really intensive two days in order to figure out how this event and system really should work as part of the innovation lab and then as a product for the MVP. >> Well that is so much of what we're talking about here at Red Hat. It's not just the tech, it's also how do people get into a room and get work done together and solve the problem that they're setting out to solve? And I think that you were talking about how you were in the room thinking, "why am I here?" But in fact, you are the, representing the user, from both the patient perspective, understanding what it's like to be in an emergency room and also the doctor perspective. So, how would you, sort of, bring it back and say, "hey, remember what we're doing here. "Remember the problem we set out to solve." >> Most of the time, I'll listen, but then, when I thought, "no that's not going "the direction I want it to be, or we want it to be" I just stood there, held my hand up and said, "No, we have to do it other way." Or, "I think that's not going to work," or "that's not the MVP." And they're really, they understood us very fast and at the beginning it was fascinating to see the Red Hat people and our own developers, everybody wanted to do it their style, 'cause they really are both very good. And it didn't take much time to combine them. And they really worked as a team. And everybody got one up step and it was nice to see. And I think it wasn't a problem to tell them what we think we should be, needed. And at the end, I think, we even got more than we discussed as an MVP. >> Andre: Mm, exaclty. >> After the three days. >> Okay, so so three days, you have the MVP. Where do we stand now with this easiER AG? >> We have an MVP after three days in Waterford. We figure out what to implement in sprints and then after, four, six weeks, we came out with the MVP that is essentially an app on a smart device for the doctor as well as the patient. And this is now working as we presented yesterday in the Keynote. >> Dorothee: Life. >> This is really, a valid product as it is and this can be applied now to healthcare trust or institutions so, if somebody wants to really use that they can do it because it's really working on an open-shift Red Hat innovative platform, right? And you can ultimately push the button and roll it out. I mean, this is really working, so. And, of course, what we have to do is user validation so, in terms of, is the use experience really perceivable independently for the users, this is something, user-testing we are doing right now in order to make it really perfectly user-friendly. And also, for the nurse side and the doctor side, that they can really use it easily, that's one of the most important things. >> And, do you have, are you, using at a hospital in Switzerland, countries around the world have different approaches to healthcare, different approaches to the emergency room, how, are you talking to other places about implementing this in other countries? In other parts o' the world? >> We are asking, we all have the same problems in healthcare. It doesn't matter where you life or where you work. I think it's all the same same problems and waiting times. >> And when you need emergency care, you need care. >> Yeah, you want to be taken care of and you want to be there really fast and you don't want to repeat every time the same sentences and the same problems to four or five people and, so, yeah, we're talking to health institutions at the moment, in Switzerland and Germany, but we hope to get there out soon in other countries as well. And I think this summit has opened many doors, and windows and we're looking forward to the future. >> Yeah, the process itself, that's the good thing, is totally independent of the context or country. It is the problem in any country or every country of the world so, we have a common approach to that and the only thing that needs to be changed it, maybe, is the hospital willing to accept that a certain automation takes place or not. And it can be fully automated or it could be done manually, right, and this is the decision of the healthcare institution or the trust who wants to implement that. So, we are flexible in that because of the technology of Red Hat because they provided the container that is really flexible in implementation. Right? And that's so great. >> Andre, Dorothee, thank you so much for your time, this is, has really been a lot o' fun learning about your company's journey. >> Together: Thank you so much for having us. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, stay tuned for more from the Red Hat Summit. (upbeat tone playing)