About Vocera Communications
Vocera Communications, Inc. (Vocera) provides secure, integrated, intelligent communication and clinical workflow solutions. The company focuses on empowering mobile workers in healthcare, hospitality, retail, energy, education and other mission-critical mobile work environments in the United States and internationally. The significant majority of the company’s business is generated from the sale of its solutions in the healthcare market to help its customers enhance quality of care, safety, patient and staff experience. The company’s solutions can also be found in hotels, nuclear power facilities, schools, libraries, retail stores and other environments where mobile workers need to communicate and access resources instantly. The company’s communication and collaboration solution enables users to connect instantly with other staff simply by saying the name, function or group name of the desired recipient. The company’s solution includes an intelligent enterprise software platform; lightweight, wearable, voice-controlled communication devices; and smartphone applications. It also delivers the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)-compliant secure text messages, alerts and alarms directly to the Vocera Badge, Vocera Smartbadge, smartphones and other mobile communication devices both inside and outside the hospital in order of priority, replacing legacy processes and technologies, including pagers and in-building wireless and landline phones. The company’s software platform is built on a scalable architecture and recognizes more than 100 spoken commands. Users can instantly communicate with others using the Vocera Smartbadge or Vocera Badge, or through smartphone applications developed for iOS and Android mobile devices. The company’s platform lets users communicate and collaborate with each other using real time voice or HIPAA-compliant secure texting, and unlike other solutions, allows users to reach people by their role, room assignment, functional group or department, without needing to know a person’s name or phone number. The system can also broadcast emergency messages to a single department or to an entire organization. The company’s solution can be integrated with other clinical systems, including Electronic Health Records (EHR), nurse call, patient monitoring and even some medical devices, to provide critical data, alerts, alarms and clinical context that enables better workflow. The company’s enterprise-class software platform also features an advanced clinical rules engine that unifies data from multiple sources simultaneously, enables prioritization of notifications, adds patient context, and sends messages to the right care team members on their mobile devices. The company’s platform allows clinicians to be away from the bedside while staying informed about their patients. The company’s portfolio of over 150 unique integrations enhances clinical workflow by enabling the interoperability of its solution with a significant number of clinical and operational systems used in hospitals. In the nuclear power industry, the company’s solutions are used to instantly connect people and resources. In education, schools use the company’s solutions to increase security, safety and staff communication and libraries use its solutions to enable their staff to be more mobile and attentive to patrons. And in retail, the company’s solutions are used to enhance the customer experience by enabling store personnel to quickly connect in and across various locations. Throughout the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic the company’s solution has been used to simplify communication, preserve surgical gloves, face masks and other valuable personal protective equipment (PPE), has allowed for care teams to do remote rounding and even allowed for a patient’s family to be included in three-way calls. Vocera Ease is the company’s cloud-based communication platform and mobile application built to improve the patient experience by enabling friends and family members to receive timely updates about the progress of their loved one in the hospital. The Vocera Ease app enables nurses and other care team members to send HIPAA-compliant texts, photos, and video updates to patients’ loved ones, putting them at ease and saving valuable time. In May 2021, the company acquired PatientSafe Solutions, Inc. (marketed and sold under the Vocera Edge brand). Vocera Edge provides a clinical communication and collaboration (CC&C) solution for smartphones that is engineered to run either on-premises or in the cloud. The solution is designed for hospitals and health systems that have invested in their electronic health record (EHR) mobile workflow software, are smartphone centric, and prefer a cloud-based CC&C solution. The solution enhances care team mobility and efficiency at the point of care through effective, reliable communication and clinical workflows. As of December 31, 2021, the company’s solutions were selected by over 2,300 healthcare facilities, including large hospital systems, small and medium-sized local hospitals, clinics, surgery centers and aged-care facilities. The company sells its solutions to healthcare customers primarily through its direct sales force in the United States, with resellers for certain vertical markets, as well as its the U.S. Government business, and through both direct sales and select distribution channels in international markets. Strategy The key elements of the company’s strategy are to expand its business to new the U.S. healthcare customers; further expand its footprint within its existing installed customer base; extend its technology advantage and create new product solutions; increase its health system selling efforts; invest in partnerships; pursue acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies and assets; grow its international healthcare presence; and expand its solutions in non-healthcare markets. Products, Technology and Services The company’s solutions include the Vocera Communication and Workflow System, Vocera Ease, Vocera Edge, and Vocera Care Experience. To complement the company’s solutions, it provides services, support and education to help its customers optimize the benefits of its solutions. Vocera Communication and Workflow System The Vocera Communication and Workflow System consists of a unique software platform that connects communication devices, including its hands-free, wearable, voice controlled Smartbadge and Badge, and third-party mobile devices that use its mobile software applications. The system transforms the way mobile workers communicate by enabling them to instantly connect via voice or secure text messaging. With a portfolio of over 150 third-party party clinical integrations, the company’s system also enables the intelligent delivery of alerts and alarms to a variety of mobile devices, providing real time situation awareness to care providers. The company’s hands-free voice capability allows mobile workers to connect with the right person simply by saying or selecting the name, function or group name of the person they want to reach, often while remaining at the point-of-care. The company’s system responds to over 100 spoken commands. Components of the Vocera Communication and Workflow System include: Vocera Software Platform: At the heart of the company’s Vocera Communication and Workflow System is a patent-protected, enterprise-class software platform. The intelligence of the company’s client-server system is contained primarily within its server-software. This platform contains an optimized speech recognition engine, intelligent call routing and management functionality, reporting and analytics tools, clinical directories and user profiles. As part of this software platform, the Engage intelligent workflow engine allows routing, escalation and prioritization of communication and alert and alarm notifications that include patient content. In addition, the company’s platform has the ability to integrate with a significant number of third-party clinical systems, including telephony, nurse call, patient monitoring and EHR systems. The company’s software platform features an advanced clinical rules engine that unifies data from multiple sources simultaneously, enables prioritization of notifications, adds patient context, and sends messages to the right care team members on their mobile devices, helping to improve patient safety and satisfaction and increase operational efficiency. By providing real-time situational awareness about the patients and care teams, the company enables healthcare workers to be more effective and suffer less from alarm and alert fatigue. Recognizing the rapidly expanding footprint of care, the company’s scalable software platform can support multiple geographic sites and multiple facilities within a healthcare system to help clinicians stay connected to the current status of their patients. Vocera Smartbadge: The company’s Smartbadge is the only wearable communication device purpose-built for patient care and can be used under PPE. The company’s Smartbadge is powered by the Vocera Software Platform and operates over customers' industry-standard Wi-Fi networks. The Smartbadge has a 2.4 inches touchscreen that enables the user to receive prioritized alert and alarm notifications with additional patient context. Additionally, users can make and answer calls hands-free or by holding it up to the ear for privacy, and send and receive secured text messages, using the touchscreen keyboard with no character limit. The Smartbadge also has a dedicated panic button and enhanced do not disturb functionality. The Smartbadge has received the FIPS 140-2 certification from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Vocera Badge: The company’s Badge is a smaller and lighter hands-free wearable device that allows the users instant two-way voice conversations without the need to remember a phone number or use a handset. Similar to the Smartbadge, it is powered by the Vocera Software Platform and operates over the customers' industry-standard Wi-Fi networks and can be used underneath PPE. It has a small display that provides a concise amount of information and allows the user to receive prioritized alarm and alert notifications with limited context. The Badge has received the FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) 140-2 certification from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The company has also received an Authority to Operate (ATO) certification from the U.S. Department of Defense for the Vocera software platform and badges. Both of these certifications are requirements to sell the company’s solutions to the U.S. government and military hospital and medical facilities. Vocera Smartphone Applications: Vocera's suite of smartphone applications enable a seamless multi-mode communications and collaboration experience; combining the unique calling, texting, alerting and content distribution capabilities of Vocera into a secure, easy-to-use smartphone application that presents incoming communication in order of importance. Available and certified for use on commercially available iOS and Android devices, the company’s smartphone applications support both personal (bring your own device or BYOD) and shared device usage models. Powered by the Vocera Software Platform, the company’s new Vina Smartphone application delivers relevant context about clinical events, patient status and clinician availability, helping care teams improve safety, quality of care and experience for patients and care teams. The customizable communication application presents prioritized patient-centric calls, secure messages and alerts in a unified inbox; and provides an intuitive user experience for clinicians inside and outside the hospital. Choice of Mobile Devices: The company resells the Spectralink Versity Smartphone and Zebra Technologies TC52 Android mobile computer. These devices are offered as a bundled solution with its smartphone applications to provide a complete, turnkey solution for its customers’ clinical communication needs. The company also delivers its solution on iOS devices. This gives the company’s customers a choice of different devices to access the power of the Vocera software platform. Vocera Ease Vocera Ease is the company’s cloud-based SaaS communication platform and mobile application built to improve the patient experience and reduce the workload on nurses by enabling friends and family members to receive timely updates about the progress of their loved one in the hospital. The Vocera Ease app enables nurses and other care team members to send HIPAA-compliant texts, photos, and video updates to patients’ loved ones, putting them at ease and saving valuable time. Vocera Edge The company’s communication solution for smartphones, which is either on-premises or cloud-based, Vocera Edge, enhances care team mobility and simplifies work at the point of care through effective, reliable workflows. Vocera Edge is ideal for smartphone-centric hospitals and health systems that are invested in EHR mobile applications and prefer a cloud-based CC&C solution. With Edge, nurses can save time by unifying the most common EHR documentation workflows and urgent, event-based communication from a single smartphone app. They can securely access patient data from the EHR at the point of care and write back directly to the patient record through closed-loop, bi-directional communication. Vocera Care Experience The company’s Care Experience solution is a hosted software suite it developed to improve patient and staff experience, safety and operational quality in near-real time. Vocera Care Experience suite offers caregivers communication solutions that span the entire care continuum - before admission, during treatment and after discharge. Vocera Care Experience includes pre-arrival communications, patient family communications and rounding capabilities. Services The company’s customer-centric strategy is supported by its services and support capabilities, which help customers optimize their use of Vocera solutions and enhance users' experience with its products. The company’s services organization consists of the following: Professional Services: The company’s professional services help customers successfully deploy, manage, update and/or expand their Vocera systems in order to gain the full benefits of its solutions. As of December 31, 2021, the company’s professional services team consisted of 134 professionals with expertise in wireless communication, clinical workflow, end-user training, speech science and project management. The company offers a full suite of services, including clinical workflow design, wireless assessment, solution configuration, training and project management, enabling customers to integrate its solutions and improve workflow efficiency and staff productivity. The company also provides classroom and distance learning curricula for systems administrators, information technology professionals and clinical educators. Software Maintenance and Support: The company provides 24x7 technical support to its customers through its support centers in San Jose, California; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Toronto, Canada; and Reading, the United Kingdom. The company’s team utilizes remote diagnostic tools to proactively assess the performance of customer systems. The company assigns technical account management resources to its largest accounts to help them expand the use of its solutions and facilitate adoption of new functionality. Software maintenance entitles customers to unspecified upgrades, bug fixes and patch releases. Additional services, including an annual Remote System Health Assessment and biweekly technical webinar education, are offered as project-based consulting or through its membership collaborative. Vocera University: The company provides hands-on, interactive educational experience through classroom training, distance learning or customized courseware covering best practices, implementation and use of its solutions. Training courses are provided for systems administrators, IT professionals and industry-specific, end-user educators. Sales and Marketing Sales The company’s sales employees call on hospitals and healthcare systems in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and several countries in the Middle East. The sales team is organized to allow the company to better serve its customers and to support the different elements of its sales strategy. The company supplements its sales organization by utilizing the U.S. government-authorized resellers to facilitate its sales to Veterans Administration and Department of Defense healthcare facilities. The company also uses resellers in certain vertical markets in the United States, as well as in international markets to supplement its sales efforts. A specialized group of the company’s sales team focuses on the development of new customer relationships with large integrated health systems and government healthcare facilities. The company has a small direct sales team to focus on developing its non-healthcare business, including hospitality, energy, education and other mission-critical mobile work environments. Marketing The company’s marketing efforts focus on building awareness and generating demand. The company’s customer-centric marketing strategy is important in generating new sales leads as word of mouth promotion and testimonials are some of its most valuable marketing tools. The company sponsors numerous customer-led webinars to demonstrate customer success and to let prospective customers hear from their peer group about the positive impact that its solutions have made on their hospitals. Many of the company’s sales leads come from referrals of existing customers or users who have moved from a hospital already using Vocera to a new facility or health system. The company also invests in digital outreach to better influence buyers early on in their decision-making. The company has an integrated product management organization that manages the full lifecycle of its products and services; from strategy through execution to end-of-life. Customers The company’s solutions have been selected by nearly 2,800 facilities worldwide. Of these, over 2,300 are hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and over 400 are outside of the United States. The company’s healthcare customers include national and international health and hospital systems, large and medium-sized independent and academic hospitals, small hospitals and healthcare facilities, and the U.S. governmental hospitals and care facilities. Intellectual Property The company held 33 U.S. patents as of December 31, 2021, including patents on many capabilities of its software platform and wearable devices. The expiration dates of these patents range from 2022 through 2036. One or more utility patents have also been issued in Australia, Canada, India, Japan and the European Patent Office (with validation in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands). A European Community design patent has been issued that protects the design in multiple European jurisdictions. Trademarks Vocera is the company’s primary registered trademark in the United States. Manufacturing Operations and Suppliers The company outsources the manufacturing of its wearable device products to original design manufacturers and contract manufacturers, including Sercomm and SMTC Corporation (SMTC). The company’s Vocera Smartbadge is built in Taiwan and its Vocera Badge is made in Mexico using custom tools and test equipment owned by it. The company also resells the Spectralink Versity Smartphone and Zebra Technologies TC52 Android mobile computer. Government Regulations In connection with the company’s healthcare communications business, it accesses personal health information on behalf of its customers. Accordingly, in the United States, the company is subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and its implementing regulations, which established uniform standards for certain covered entities (healthcare providers engaged in electronic transactions, health plans and healthcare clearinghouses) governing the conduct of certain electronic healthcare transactions and protecting the security and privacy of protected health information. Most of the company’s customers are covered entities under HIPAA and to the extent that it accesses personal health information on their behalf, it is their ‘business associates’; and are subject to HIPAA and associated contractual obligations, as well as comparable state privacy and security laws. In addition, the company is subject to privacy and security regulations in other jurisdictions. The company is subject its products to testing by independent testing laboratories for compliance with the relevant standards issued by various the U.S. and international bodies, including the EU (with respect to the CE mark), the International Electrotechnical Commission, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Underwriters Laboratories, and CSA International. History Vocera Communications, Inc. was founded in 2000. The company was incorporated in Delaware in 2000.
