Last week, the entire U.S. Rimsys team gathered in our Pittsburgh offices for the first time in 2022. It was an incredible week of collaboration, learning, goal-setting, and meeting the more than 25 new team members who had joined since our last on-site in December. It was also an opportunity to reflect on the company that Brad (Co-Founder & CTO) and I started just a few years ago, how much we’ve changed, and where we want to go.

I founded Rimsys with a singular focus on medtech regulatory affairs, and solving all of the incredibly painful challenges that I experienced leading regulatory teams in the industry. In large organizations, regulatory affairs is directly linked to hundreds of millions dollars in revenue, yet RA teams still do most of their work manually using spreadsheets and other tools that aren’t remotely fit for purpose. 

The Rimsys platform is designed to digitize regulatory information, make it much more easily accessible, and allow regulatory affairs teams to use it to power a series of automated processes. As a result, our customers have dramatically reduced the administrative work associated with regulatory activities, from reducing release authorization time by 80% to reducing GSPR maintenance time by 99%! Rimsys 5, which we announced this week, introduces more streamlined workflows, a brand-new user interface, and adds even more time-saving capabilities like collaborative submission authoring, and integrated regulatory intelligence.

This focus on regulatory affairs was what drove the initial mission of the company to “digitize, automate, and create order for the medical technology industry”. This mission helped to drive alignment and focus as we were initially building out the company, but it also missed the broader picture of why we, and the industry, were doing this in the first place.

A life-saving shipment

This bigger picture began to take shape when I received an email from one of our customers during the horrific COVID-19 outbreak in India last spring. The customer is a large in-vitro diagnostic manufacturer, and they were working to quickly send humanitarian shipments of testing products to help with the crisis. In the email, along with some images of the initial shipment being loaded for transport, our customer noted that because all of their product and regulatory documentation was managed in Rimsys, they were able to expedite clearance and release authorization, avoiding import delays while paving the way for the life-saving diagnostics to be shipped more quickly.

We talk a lot about efficiency and the direct link that regulatory affairs has to revenue in the medtech industry, but there’s more to it of course. Much more. At the end of the day, medtech companies create products, and regulatory affairs teams work to place them on the market in order to give patients access to technologies that can dramatically improve and even save their lives. This is what we’re doing.

A bolder, broader mission

With this context, our initial mission felt a bit narrow. It spoke to what we were doing, but not really why. So, we decided to revise the company mission statement. Working with our team on-site we crafted a new mission that better aligns with the outcomes we’re helping to drive in the world:

Improve global health by accelerating delivery and increasing availability of life-changing medical technologies

The new mission clearly articulates the “why” behind what we’re doing, but it also deliberately doesn’t constrain our approach. Today we’re focused on using technology to streamline regulatory affairs, but there are many other areas across the industry that our technology can improve; from post-market, to clinical, to marketing. Our vision is for Rimsys to be the leading technology provider to the medical technology industry.

Why this matters

As our company grows, it’s critical to me to maintain the culture that we established in the early days. This isn’t something that happens on its own. Culture only grows organically with deliberate focus and attention. Whether it’s our company values, our focus on continuous learning, our regular on-site’s for remote team members, or our new revised mission, I’m constantly reflecting on how we will build a large, successful business that stays true to our purpose.

Our new mission clearly states our purpose, and explains why we think this industry is so vital. We’re honored to have the opportunity to help more life-changing technologies get into the hands of patients that need them. And, if this mission resonates with you, we’re hiring across all of our teams.

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