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Simon Schurr recalls when his mother was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma nearly a decade ago and the tough decision that many in his family’s position have faced — whether to wait and see how the disease progresses or to start chemotherapy and advanced treatment immediately.

They ultimately chose the latter. But the decision was stalled by the nearly two months it took for him to seek multiple opinions — opinions that conflicted at times — from doctors in their native Israel and in Switzerland, by specialists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and finally Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“My mom is only one person out of so many millions of people who get the wrong diagnosis, wrong treatment, delayed diagnosis and delayed treatment,” Schurr said. “This is the problem of our health system.”

It might be the type of life-changing experience that inspires someone to look for a solution, but it turns out Schurr was already doing that when his mother was diagnosed. At the time, he was researching at Columbia University to develop new technology for doctors, patients and other stakeholders to share patient information locally or even globally — all with the goal of improving treatment.

Such a platform is the basis for the company Schurr now leads as chairman and CEO, Collaborative Medical Technology Corp., or CMTC. The Paramus-based firm has developed a cloud-based platform and a series of apps that help everything from diagnoses and second opinions to sharing radiology and records management.

Overall, he said, the technology aims to take the concept of “telemedicine” to a whole new level — from what has long been simply videoconferencing to a new standard that leads to better patient care and expanded access to the best specialists.

“Health care is almost one of the last industries to really take advantage of the whole information technology revolution: automation, workflow, communication, instant messaging,” Schurr said. “At the level of the point of care, it’s almost nonexistent. And our technology … brings all these capabilities into one solution.”

CMTC is now preparing to roll out its platform to about 30,000 doctors in about 3,000 practices in the region. That’s thanks to a partnership with Advanced Data Systems Corp., a Paramus-based software provider for the health care industry, whose electronic medical records software is being integrated with CMTC’s technology to become available for use by early next year.

But the company, which Schurr said has 12 employees and revenue under $10 million, has been working toward this milestone and this sort of scale since its founding in 2000 — and even before that.

The 54-year-old entrepreneur in business and information technology traces the journey to the early 1990s, when he was a researcher and graduate student at Lehigh University. He spent four years there, focusing on educational technology and distance learning.

That led him to a position as chief information officer at Coordinated Health Systems, the largest orthopedics and sports medicine multispecialty group in eastern Pennsylvania, where he developed a platform to manage and deliver care among five regional and 12 medical centers.

“This is what brought me into the industry,” Schurr said. “I figure that medicine is a knowledge-based business and you need to distribute it, you need to create intelligent systems. So a top specialist can offer his services not just in his room, but also on the wires. And this is really what led me to build this remote collaboration platform.”

His two years with Coordinated Health Systems led to a similar assignment with NYMA, a Greenbelt, Maryland-based government contractor, and ultimately an invitation from Columbia University Medical Center in 2000. It was at the Ivy League school that Schurr and a team of researchers founded CMTC, part of an effort to make the hospital’s services available to patients around the world.

His next five years with the university included a pilot program with Morristown Medical Center, Intermed Medical Center of Istanbul and several other clinics, which Schurr said helped prove the concept of a sharable platform for medical information. In 2007, CMTC established a “strategic partnership” and secured an investment from Advanced Data Systems, prompting its relocation to Bergen County.

That’s all been followed by series of other successful pilots — including with the University of Virginia’s Emilie Couric Cancer Center, in which doctors used the technology to help conduct screenings for patients in underserved parts of the state. Schurr said “the efficacy of the technology and the merit is all well known” at this point; CMTC is now preparing to take the next step.

While the platform is currently by available by invitation and subscription only, Schurr is banking on major growth as it has expanded from pilots with teaching hospitals to electronic medical records companies and other segments of the health care industry. That’s not to mention patients, a market that can ultimately put the platform in the hands of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, he said.

“It’s exciting because of the Affordable Care Act and the whole new consumer demand,” Schurr said. “The consumers, the people are becoming much more savvy and much more demanding on getting the right care. … “So, from Day One, my mission, my passion (has been) to enhance patient experience and give them the ability to get better outcomes on their care.”

Biz in brief

Name: Collaborative Medical Technology Corp.
Location: Paramus
Founder: Simon Schurr
Employees: 12
Revenue: Less than $10 million