ROOK Works with InterSystems to Reach New Markets, Cut Sales Cycles in Half

ROOK, a Miami-based software company, created its first products (RookMotion) for use in the gym. The company’s heart rate monitor and software platform connected coaches and athletes to real-time performance data to enhance training and results. But as ROOK expanded its offerings to incorporate data from multiple wearable devices – not just its own heart rate monitor – the company ran into a problem that is all too familiar in healthcare. Trying to unify data from multiple devices and manufacturers resulted in a tangled mess. Each wearable had its own data format, common measures would be expressed using different units, and each required different methods to extract and integrate data with ROOK products.

“Capturing and integrating data from each wearable, one at a time, was really painful,” said Jonas Ducker, COO at ROOK. So, ROOK created its own solution to the problem, an API (application programming interface) for access to device data. The API provides a single method to access data from diverse wearable devices. With this challenge resolved, ROOK soon had healthcare and insurance companies knocking on its door. These companies wanted to become “wearable agnostic,” like ROOK, and wondered if ROOK could make its solution available to them as a service.

Seizing the opportunity, ROOK partnered with InterSystems to quickly commercialize its API and pivot to a new business model. “Our customers only have to integrate our API once into their applications, and they get access to data from, currently, more than 300 different wearables,” said Marco Benitez, ROOK CEO. ROOK uses InterSystems IRIS® for Health data platform to support normalization, storage, and integration of clean, structured information into customer electronic health records or insurance systems using HL7® FHIR® or other data sharing standards.

With help from InterSystems, ROOK saw its sales cycle time cut in half. “Having data interoperability built into our solution is a major reason why,” Ducker said. “Before, getting the data into the customer’s target systems was something we had to leave up to them. And that was a problem they didn’t want to deal with.”

The next step in ROOK’s evolution is using the machine learning and AI toolkit in InterSystems IRIS for Health to analyse aggregated data from FDA-approved wearables and other devices to help detect and prevent disease development. “We are shifting our focus toward data science,” Benitez said. “That’s what our customers want, and a lot of it will be built on top of the InterSystems toolset.”

As a young company with constrained resources, collaboration is a key part of ROOK’s growth plan. “You need to be very intentional about what you do, especially in connecting with the right people, institutions, and partners out there,” said Ducker. “InterSystems has opened doors for us that we couldn’t have opened alone.”