MCS Tech builds on foundations of the past as it looks to crack mega US market

MCS Tech, the Cork medical software and solutions firm, is harnessing years of medical know-how to catapult it into markets many times the size of the Irish medical sector after landing significant new contracts domestically.

The company is a new software firm set up by Nick Condon Jr and Fiachra O’Driscoll in 2021, but draws its inspiration from MC Support, a medical billing firm founded in 2015 by Nick Condon Sr.

The idea for MCS Tech came when Condon Snr was retiring and his son and O’Driscoll identified a need for “new tech in the market”, O’Driscoll said.

MCS Tech, which posted revenues of €245,000 last year, sells in-house developed software and cloud-based solutions to private healthcare providers in Ireland that aims to improve their revenue cycle management.

Their software helps healthcare providers track pending and ongoing transactions across many layers of their business, which in several cases replaces the traditional paper-based model that many hospitals are still partially or fully dependent upon.

“A lot of hospital divisions are quite siloed,” said O’Driscoll. “And what they needed was one solution, really, that can take the entire revenue cycle and put it into one easy workflow for them”.

It is this cloud-based revenue management software that makes up the bulk of their revenue and represents the largest opportunity for the company to expand overseas.

“We’ve built a hospital-agnostic platform, which is very suitable for the Irish market,” O’Driscoll said, but also outlined a rough timeline of expansion into other markets, and particularly Germany, which he noted was a €400 billion market that the company was keen to be part of.

The US is an even more enticing prospect, O’Driscoll said, representing a colossal €1.2 trillion private healthcare market.

Even a tiny slice of this market could cement the company’s future, he said, and within 18 months the company will looking to enter the market.

Aims to double headcount

Exploration of other markets came about as a result of Enterprise Ireland (EI) research performed in partnership with the company, which is classified as a high potential start-up by the body, that identified the firm’s potential growth markets.

“They have really been fantastic,” said O’Driscoll. MCS Tech also benefitted from being included in EI’s New Frontiers programme, which identifies highly scalable start-ups which could provide employment opportunities down the line.

The company has grown to 7 people and aims to more than double the headcount to 15 within the next year, as their revenue is expected to more than double to €650,000 this year.

A lot of that confidence comes from their recent signing of a multi-year contract with Bons Secours, the largest private healthcare provider in the state, to replace the software across each of their five hospitals, starting with Galway in June and fully rolled out by October.

They’re a long-term partner of the hospital group and are currently in talks with several other hospitals with a view to extending their technology into more medical settings soon.

Bon Secours are launching a new electronic health records project early next year, which O’Driscoll said will integrate directly with their suite of software once their records are fully digitised.

He said they are in discussions with several other private providers, and have approached the HSE.

Allied to their software solutions, which are cloud-based, is their ‘Sign It’ product, which they see as being primed for growth in the Irish and UK markets. It aims to quicken admissions to hospitals for patients by getting their signature on the way to the hospital, thereby helping staff with patient management and ensuring patients get seen to quicker.

This Making It Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland