With more than 27 years in the health care technology space, Matt is the Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Illuminate. His passion has always centered on solving problems.
As a young boy, he and a neighborhood friend would visit garage sales to purchase small appliances and other mechanical items, then return home to take them a part to see how they worked. In high school during the early 1980s, a teacher mentor fueled his interest in PC programming — even turning a blind eye when Matt skipped classes to spend more time in the computer lab.
At Kansas State University, Matt graduated with a Computer Science, Engineering degree in 1989. Matt joined Cerner Corporation and over the next seven years participated in the dramatic growth of the company as Cerner became a global leader in health care information technology. After a short detour outside the health care industry, his former boss, a vice president at Cerner, recommended the company hire Matt as a consultant to use his unique engineering skills to solve a productivity issue at the company.
It was during this time that Matt discovered his entrepreneurial heart. A particular challenge continued to frustrate physicians and hospital decision makers, and Matt’s lifelong passion for solving problems fueled a willingness to risk everything to meet it.
In 1995, Matt co-founded Softek Solutions, Inc., a health care-focused software company based on a yet-to-be-proven idea.
Matt and his team soon built a robust software solution for monitoring and managing one of the top electronic medical record systems in the industry. As CEO, Matt assisted in growing the solution into a multi-million-dollar company recognized worldwide for its continual commitment to turn customer requests into new functionality to maximize EMR productivity.
During one of these fact-finding customer meetings, Matt discovered an unmet need in the radiology department which led to the creation of Illuminate®, a search, notification, reporting and analytics application for electronic patient records. As the acceptance of Illuminate among radiologists, compliance directors and other medical professionals began to grow, Matt realized the needs of these audiences were different from the IT-centric software offerings at his then company.
An avid outdoorsman, Matt frequently visits his 85-acre farm where he unplugs and unwinds with his wife Mary and their family by hunting, fishing, and camping. Matt also serves as a Boy Scout leader and has seen his two sons successful reach Eagle Scout status and is currently helping his foster son accomplish the same.
