History, Company Profile
OZ Systems is a privately held group of companies founded in 1996 by Ken Pool, M.D and Terese Finitzo, Ph.D; leaders in the fields of clinical neuroscience, children’s hearing, speech-language learning, and health informatics. Their efforts in newborn and child screening have led to innovative information management tools for state and national programs, hospitals, and individual health care providers. Dr. Finitzo and Dr. Pool developed a software application that not only captured newborn screening results at the point of care, but also provided collaborative workflow automation for follow-up and ongoing care in the weeks and months following birth. Recognizing that children receive care in multiple health and education environments, their patented business processes were designed to help their customers communicate and assure health and education care for children 0 to 21.
First Years
In the immediate years following the foundation of the corporation, three coinciding events caused OZ Systems’ first product to evolve:
- Word about how this product improved sustainability for public health programs, especially those in the neonatal and pediatric community, expanded its customer base.
- Government agencies throughout the world began to mandate software-based record keeping and follow-up systems for health screening.
- The Internet became globally accessible, accepted, and used.
OZ Systems’ obvious move was to develop an online browser-based version of its first products for hospital and pediatric providers with an Internet connection. Public health, clinicians, and educators needed overlapping subsets of relevant data being collected. But how could they be sure that privacy was maintained and relationships between the information collected remained current and relevant? This is what OZ Systems brought to the health care community; a “web of trust” to ensure that privacy dictates of families could be instantiated; a role and rule-based application that permitted workflow collaboration. These business processes have been built into all OZ Systems applications since the first product was introduced in newborn screening.
In 2002, OZ Systems debuted its online version of its screening and information management software, eSP™ (e-ScreenerPlus) for the National Health Service in England where it was met with widespread success and, as a result, OZ has enjoyed steady growth as more customers have signed on. Subsequent developments include new applications that integrate seamlessly with eSP™. These new applications include Care Management, Diagnostic Audiology, Early Childhood Intervention. In addition, OZ Systems provides an application geared to pediatricians and primary care providers, along with essential tools for communications, analysis, and reporting. In 2007, Newborn Bloodspot Screening Care Management was introduced. Today it is the only NBS application with workflow automation and care paths for more than 51 disorders, allowing NBS state and hospital staff to know immediate next steps for a baby.
The company expanded, introducing eREADI School + ™, aligning schools with the technological solutions of OZ Systems to help educators and health care providers make good decisions for children.
Today
OZ Systems’ headquarters is in Arlington, Texas with additional satellite offices in Austin, Washington, D.C., Canada, Mexico and Switzerland, where OZ Systems International, Sarl is based. In addition to children’s health and education, new tools expand OZ Systems’ cloud computing services, and serve as Health Information Exchange platforms for states and regions.
