Kyle Samani is Founder and CEO of Pristine, a well-funded startup based out of Austin, TX that’s developing apps for surgery on Google Glass. He also writes for one of the most prominent blogs in healthcare IT, HIStalk. Kyle began building computers as a child, and self-taught programming during adolescence. He attended NYU Stern to study finance, thinking he wanted to work on Wall Street. The more he learned about finance, the less he liked it, and he quickly gravitated back towards his roots in technology.
After 2 years of college, Kyle began working for a rural-hospital-focused electronic health record (EHR) vendor, VersaSuite, in Austin. He never moved back to New York, though he did graduate on time by skipping all of his classes and flying to New York just to take the tests. Meanwhile, at VersaSuite, Kyle held three distinct positions, each for one year: engineering team lead, technical sales lead, and product manager for all clinical applications. He had the opportunity to learn how a hospital works, and translated that to the major operational functions of the company: design, development, training, sales, and support.
The moment he saw Glass in February of 2013, Kyle began working on what would eventually become Pristine. He knew in seconds that Glass would change healthcare in more profound ways than smartphones and tablets have. After developing a business plan and recruiting a cofounder, Kyle and his cofounder Patrick Kolencherry quit their jobs to start Pristine. Pristine has raised $400,000 in seed funding, and employs 4 people today. The company has also been accepted into Capital Factory’s Incubator program. The first pilot hospitals will begin using Pristine’s software in September of 2013. The company expects to generate its first revenue with the launch of Glass by the end of 2013.