Building Purchase Latest Sign of Westborough Health Care Business' Growth

Girish Kumar Navani describes his Westborough-based business as using "technology to change and improve health care."

Two weeks ago, eClinicalWorks changed -- due to growth -- for the second time in two years.

The digital health care information firm bought a 61,000-square-foot office building at 1 Technology Drive, a short walk from its 100,000-square-foot corporate headquarters at 2 Technology Drive, for $7.7 million.

The larger building has about 700 employees, Navani said Tuesday. The new space is for new employees, who will begin using it in six to eight weeks, he said; the firm is "hiring 20, 25 people a month," he said. The company's revenue cycle management group, which "provides billing service to doctors' offices" will "grow into that building," which will continue having other tenants, he said.

"We're full in this building. It's that simple," said Navani, a Shrewsbury resident, and the company's CEO and co-founder.

"I needed space to grow. We're hiring and we're growing. We had a bunch of choices, including some of our regional offices, like expanding in Chicago and expanding in San Francisco, but then this building became available. It was so  ortunate to be so close to corporate: walking distance. We just couldn't say no."

Navani said he and four others started eClincialWorks in Northborough in 1999. The company moved to the Westborough Business Park with 14 employees in 2003, and to Technology Drive 18 months ago.

"It started with the idea of changing the patient-physician experience," Navani recalled.

"Since then, it's mushroomed into something quite significantly larger. Just the whole idea of how you check patients in, how you see them, how your prescriptions transfer electronically, how your labs get done electronically, your insurance billing. So, when you walk into a doctor's office, you don't have to see a manila envelope sitting on a rack.

"You write your prescription on a computer, you send your lab over on a computer, you go ahead and send information from here to another doctor on a computer. It's all digital."

EClincialWorks will have an iPad version in about two months, Navani said.

"I see eClinicalWorks as a continuum of continuing to streamline healthcare: all the way from the consumer, who is the patient, to the delivery, which is the physician," he said.

"There are lots of tools, lots of technology yet to be built that patients can use in their homes. We can build technology that allows patients to communicate with doctors even when they're not in the office. We can also streamline finding the best resources at the best time and the best pricing models.

"Healthcare's going to change in the next decade, and technology is going to do it."

EClinicalWorks' Patient Portal has more than five million online patients, all subscribed for free, Navani said.

The service allows patients to "see their labs, see their medications," he explained.

"We just updated our portal this weekend. We received tens of e-mails saying, 'Wow, this website is cool,'" Navani said.