The Story of AdviNOW Medical: Building the Google of Healthcare

Sometimes the most significant opportunities emerge when you’re forced to look in unexpected places. For James Bates, a non-compete agreement following the sale of Freescale to NXP would lead him away from his expertise in self-driving vehicles and toward an entirely different industry: healthcare.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, James shared how his journey began in 2016 with a simple goal – understanding why Obamacare was so divisive. “The ACA, or Obamacare, as many people know, it had just passed, and the whole world was divided. Half of the Americans said they wanted Obamacare, half said they hated it. And I didn’t really understand it.”

To gain firsthand knowledge, James began evaluating medical practices for potential acquisition. What he discovered shocked him: “I was shocked to see that they don’t really make money. I mean, most people think, oh, doctors, everything associated with medicine, a third of our economy, that must be everyone’s rich. But the medical practice businesses, they don’t make money. We’re talking low, single digit EBITDA.”

This revelation led to a partnership with an urgent care chain operator who gave James unprecedented access to study their operations. Armed with his engineering background, James conducted a Six Sigma cost analysis of every movement in the clinic. The results were startling: two-thirds of physicians’ time was spent on tasks they weren’t required to do – they simply did them because they had the medical knowledge.

This inefficiency wasn’t just a problem – it was an opportunity. Drawing from his experience with self-driving vehicle technology, James realized he could apply similar AI principles to automate these tasks. “Using similar type of artificial intelligence that I used in the self driving vehicle world… I could take that. Mimic a physician’s brain, build an AI that will mimic a physician’s brain, and then we build an AI that mimics an administrator’s brain.”

But building the solution was only half the battle. James discovered that the healthcare industry’s incentive structures actively worked against cost reduction. Insurance companies, limited by law to 20% profit margins, were incentivized to increase revenue rather than efficiency. “Rather than making an efficient insurance company, they bloat it as much as possible so that they can grow on the revenue side.”

This insight shaped AdviNOW’s approach. Instead of focusing solely on cost reduction, they created value for all stakeholders. James invested nearly $10 million of his own capital and sought strategic investors who brought industry expertise along with funding.

Looking ahead, James sees AdviNOW becoming the central nervous system of healthcare operations. “AdviNOW inevitably becomes a Google of healthcare,” he explains. The company’s vision extends beyond just automating administrative tasks. “Once you have all of this data, structured data flowing through where the AI is collecting the data, it is populating the data, then you actually can get FDA approval for the AI to actually do the diagnosing and treating as well.”

This doesn’t mean replacing physicians, but rather transforming their role. “I don’t think the world will ever be without physicians, because humans need physicians to explain what it all means. But physicians won’t be spending their time on the simple stuff that will all go away.”

For James, this is just the beginning of a broader transformation in healthcare. “I’m looking forward to a world where healthcare is not a mystery. Healthcare is solved. And now we’re talking about the aging crisis… how do we keep people young? And so it’s really exciting for me to go through this journey.”