CEO Profile: Don Marchon – Remote Meeting Technologies

The below article is courtesy of Beta Gamma Sigma (BGS), the international honor society serving business programs accredited by AACSB International – The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Membership in Beta Gamma Sigma is the highest recognition a business student anywhere in the world can receive in a business program accredited by AACSB International. The value of remote telepathology using video technologies has been made previously here (see: Back to the Future). The article discusses Mr. Marchon’s history and background and starting Remote Meeting Technologies

BGS Member Profiles 
Don Marchon
Founder and CEO, Remote Meeting Technologies

Don Marchon, founder and CEO of Remote Meeting Technologies, realized he had a decision to make when he hit his 18th successful year at Hewlett Packard.

“Will I remain with HP, which is a wonderful organization to work for, or will I ever have the opportunity to pursue something I would really love to do on my own?” he asked. At that point, his dream was to “start something and be able to drive it with similar goals and values that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard maintained,” he said.

Marchon began his career at HP as a sales engineer with the intent to stay three to five years. His promotion to general manager literally swept him into new territory; he spent 90% of his time traveling

He loved it. He maintained worldwide partnerships with companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, CA and IBM, and he excelled at value chain management. However, his family suffered from having him gone so often, one reason he eventually reconsidered HP.

During the evenings, Marchon enhanced his undergraduate degree in economics with an MBA in corporate finance from Hofstra University, graduating with honors in 1991. Several professors wondered why he had focused on something in which he had little experience.

“Although I had a strong marketing and sales background, what I didn’t have under my belt at the time to my satisfaction was finance,” he said. “I decided to hone my skills on something I didn’t fully know. Ultimately, that is starting to serve me very well now in starting and owning this organization.”

Remote Meeting Technologies (or RMT) takes the conventional way doctors share medical images remotely and transforms the process into a colorful, live and high-definition experience delivered through the internet. The company’s mission is to bring to doctors and specialists exactly what they visually need to do their jobs with excellence.

The life and excitement it brings to Marchon is a pleasant side effect.

“There has always been a part of me with a human capital aspect to it. Wouldn’t it be nice to do something you love with individuals you admire, and at the end of the day not only make a living out of it, but also excel at helping people, too?” he said. “That is just a good thing.”

The former HP employee still speaks highly of the way his former employer solved real problems for organizations by incorporating an engaging vision for both technology and the employees.

“[HP] really treated [its] people as a primary asset within the organization,” he said. “They promoted within, wanted people to grow within the organization and gave you the flexibility and the tools to do it.”

As an entrepreneur, Marchon now enjoys the opportunity to build his own company. With that comes a close-up view of both success and failure, but he loves differentiating and defining his own future. 

“You may be driving to achieve a certain goal or objective, and along the way you may have had a failure from which you learned something,” he said.

For example, RMT started as a video-conferencing product intended for many markets. It did not achieve the success he hoped, but he considers the original fail to have resulted in focus on specific markets, or a strategic by-product. 

“At the end of the day, with perseverance, you are actually achieving something greater than you had originally focused on achieving,” he said.

Marchon embraces a do-what-you-love attitude, as well as his strong suits: developing solutions, the internet, working with the end-user and strategic partnerships.

Everything is linked by his interest in medicine. 

“I have always had a love for medicine,” Marchon said. “I have always admired doctors and every aspect of medicine.” 

Marchon’s gravitation toward the medical field is linked to the strong line of psychologists in his family. He also cites a personal gratitude for medicine, based on a medical emergency his son experienced.

Medicine is even linked to Marchon’s days at HP, when he worked on vertical market based partnerships that included the medical space. RMT addressed one of the areas of medicine Marchon always saw as needing improvement.

“We have designed a Telemedicine technology where you do not need to load client software,” he said. “Many participants are able to receive to their PC or Mac device in real-time, live HD video that is securely locked down in the way of HIPPA compliant requirements. We allow multiple physicians to collaborate on these live, real-time images concurrently.”

The benefits are apparent the moment a telepathologist uses the system.

“We have been able to make that image live, real-time, and get to the level of visual detail that those doctors will clearly be able to say ‘I now see what I need to see,’” Marchon said. 

One of RMT’s clients has just recently developed a medical poster that will be published in medical journals validating RMT’s Telepathology solution. Through their research, they have found that there is essentially no difference between looking inside a microscope and using RMT’s iMedHD Telepathology solutions to facilitate decision making.

Doctors need to be comfortable and confident if they are assessing a slide remotely, and image quality was always an issue. 

“Conventional microscope camera offerings just weren’t cutting it,” Marchon said. “We look at [pathologists] as being the artists, because they see things most people don’t see at the cellular level. They can actually see different colors, different structures, different aspect ratios, and put into context what’s happening at a cellular level.”

Marchon travels the country meeting with clients after performing simple demonstrations of his product. 

“The beauty of our technology is that it is internet-based,” he said. “Anyone can experience our secure live high definition demonstration with simply the use of a browser. We have designed a scalable architecture that can be built upon to address any medical requirement that uses video. For example we are now launching a new offering in Radiology with ultrasound.”

Driving partnerships through excellent customer service also cuts to the core of Marchon’s business model.

“If we consider our customers to be part of the family and part of the partnership, the relationship we have with them goes beyond just a customer-vendor type of interaction,” Marchon said. “It is more like we are part of their team, and they are part of our team. There is a great deal of respect between both organizations working to achieve common goals and objectives.”

Medical facilities across the United States have embraced the technology. Given this success, RMT has also begun to expand internationally. After the seven years it took to develop the technology, one of the company’s core strengths is its ability to meet the demands of security requirements across the globe.

“Security and making sure you properly handle patient information is extremely critical, and the nice part of our technology is [that] we have specifically designed the solution to where no patient information is in the hands of RMT,” he said. “Everything is managed and driven internally by that medical facility.”

Marchon wants to focus on a few key marketing strategies as they move forward, one being internet marketing. For now, most of RMT’s sales come directly through word of mouth.

After committing to a new path nearly 10 years ago, Marchon would be the first to say that he is surpassing his goals and doing what he loves.

“This organization is not me, this organization is ‘us,’ and that is what is very exciting,” Marchon said. “When an organization, partner or customer truly says ‘this is of value, this is something we need,’ that is one of the biggest things that gets me charged: knowing that we did the right things in developing the right high-quality products at cost effective prices to help people.”