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UPFRONT - THINKING GLOBALLY, ACTING LOCALLY
Honolulu’s Akimeka, a Native Hawaiian-owned high-tech company, is an inspiration to Hawaii’s up- and-coming technology firms
By Lucy Jokiel
March, 2000
Printed by permission, Island Business
In the new high-tech economy, a growing number of small entrepreneurial startups are positioning themselves to compete globally. Honolulu-based Akimeka-a nearly 3-year-old Native Hawaiian-owned medical technologies research and development company-is an inspiration to other local information technology companies seeking to compete in a fiercely competitive global market.
Thanks to the passion of its employees, government tax incentives and a steady flow of federal government contracts, the technology-driven company generated revenues of $8 million last year. Akimeka has also won national recognition from Government Computer News for one of its flagship telemedicine projects.
The company’s mission is to become the gateway to telehealth and telemedicine in Hawaii and the Pacific, an ambitious goal for the fledgling 18-employee firm. In a partnership with Alu Like, a nonprofit group that assists Native Hawaiians, Tripler Medical Center and Sandwich Island Communications, Akimeka interns learn information skills firsthand.
Most important to its founder and president, Vaughn Garner Akimeka Vasconcellos, is the desire to employ innovative technology transfer to improve the healthcare status of Native Hawaiians and other underserved populations. Growing up in Hoolehua on Molokai and Papakolea on Oahu, Vasconcellos was keenly aware of the heavy toll taken on Hawaiians by disproportionally high rates of hypertension, diabetes and other chronic diseases. Recent congressional support to reverse this trend allows the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs in Hawaii to assist Native Hawaiians in a federal healthcare partnership.
A Kamehameha Schools graduate, Vasconcellos won an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After graduation, he served in military staff and command positions for 15 years, including White House duty as a military aide during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Following his final tour of duty with paratroopers, Vasconcellos headed for the business world, where he worked for IBM and Unisys Corp. He was rewarded with a fully funded executive MBA program at Northeastern University in Boston, Mass.
When he returned to Hawaii in 1996, Vasconcellos worked as a manager for federal government projects operating out of Tripler. In early 1997, he established Akimeka and Co., recently transitioned into a limited liability corporation. In mid-1998, he persuaded Roger LeBlanc to join the company as its chief information officer. A commercial pharmacist and retired Army medical administrator, LeBlanc was preparing to leave his position as the CIO/program manager at Tripler and move his family back to the East Coast. "It was a tough offer to refuse," LeBlanc recalls. "Vaughn’s vision to improve the Hawaiian healthcare system was something I could buy into."
Nearly 90 percent of Akimeka’s work involves federal contracts. The company has provided its expertise to Tripler projects involving diagnostic tools that can differentiate normal tissue from cancerous tissue, databases to support telehealth initiatives for clinics in Japan, contractor support for international disaster management and a community healthcare nursing-home visitation program geared to prevent child abuse and neglect. The company also maintains a project office in Orlando, Fla.
As the only Native Hawaiian firm focusing solely on the insertion of technology into the delivery of healthcare services, Akimeka works hand-in-hand with the Pacific E-Health Innovation Center at Tripler Medical Center. "We are the conduit for creating the synergy for a truly integrated healthcare system among the Department of Defense, the Veterans Affairs, the state of Hawaii and the communities," says Vasconcellos.
Akimeka’s first commercial project, The Mobile Care Health Project, is a federally funded consortium of community-based organizations that provide medical and dental services to indigent populations. Mobile vans drive to roughly eight sites located in remote rural areas of the Big Island. Akimeka has developed a customized Web-based telemedicine solution that provides paperless documentation of healthcare records and creates an electronic database accessible by an authorized user over a secure network connection.
Akimeka is typical of a growing number of homegrown businesses offering global, technology-driven services and products, willing to take risks and committed to improving the quality of life for Hawaii residents.
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