R47 is the research and product side of RootBound Health, a clinic in Seattle. We build software for the problems we run into treating patients.
Most health software is designed by people who have never worked a shift. We start the other way round: notice what goes wrong in the room, work out how to describe it precisely, then build something that keeps track of it. ANCHOR is the first thing we have built this way.
How we work
clinic first
R47 works out of a clinic, so we see the small breakdowns first-hand: the fax nobody sent, the call nobody returned, the referral that never came back. These are not paperwork problems - they are how people get hurt. We turn each one into something a computer can track, then test whether tracking it actually helps.
Find a failure that really happens in care.
Pin down what it is, when it counts as late, and what done means.
Write the safety rules into the software itself.
Check it against real people, real baselines, and real failure.
The mark
rings and roots
The R47 seal is a cut through a tree - rings, roots, and a pulse line across the middle. You can read a tree's whole history in its rings. A medical record should work the same way and almost never does. It is struck in metal rather than carved in wood: the record made permanent and exact. It is a logo, not a badge or a qualification.
The clinic
somewhere to test
The hardest part of new clinical software is having nowhere to try it. Hospitals will not hand over patients to something unproven, and without patients you cannot prove anything. We have a working clinic, so we can watch the problem happen and test the fix on ourselves before asking anyone else to take the risk.
Also planned
objects, not just code
Working in a clinic turns up problems no amount of code will fix. Some of them need an object. R47 is being set up so it can make things as well as write software.
None of this exists yet, and the company has not been set up for it. This is what we intend to do, not a catalogue.
Cosmetic injections are given with insulin needles, because nothing better is sold for it. The markings are hard to read at that size, so it is harder than it should be to know exactly how much has gone in. A syringe designed for this specific use would make the dose easier to see and easier to get right.
A wearable. It begins as a way to collect health readings between appointments, and is meant to grow into something that helps people recovering from a stroke, or living with sight loss, get through the day.
A 3D printer, so an idea can be built and handed to a clinician the same week. Most of these will turn out to be wrong. Finding that out cheaply is the point.
Ownership
RootBound owns it
R47 is part of RootBound Health PLLC. Investor enquiries go through RootBound Health. Nothing on this site is an offer to sell shares.
The team
two people
Two people. Full profiles, and what it means to depend on just two, are on the team page.
