David Winn

David Winn, CEO of Masterplan Inc, has been at the company’s helm for a little less than a year. As the former CEO of a telecom company and head of IBM’s global services division for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, he is back in the United States after 15 years abroad and is positioned to take Masterplan to the next level. With a presence in 32 states, the company has been delivering clinical engineering services to health care providers—including biomeds, techs, and diagnostic imaging field engineers—for 30 years. Winn spoke with 24×7 about the future of Masterplan and the industry.

24×7: What kind of training do you offer to keep your biomeds up to date?

Winn: We do a lot of in-house training at ReMedPar’s facilities. It’s our sister company, and we have big laboratories and setups there. We’re expanding our technical training capabilities, but we’re also expanding our soft-skill training. What it really comes down to is delivering legendary customer service, and we’re going to be putting a lot of focus on that going forward.

24×7: How are you recruiting potential employees?

Winn: Well, it’s a mix of things, really. We recruit some people right out of school and then train them. Some come to us from the military, and then others come either from hospitals or other service organizations. I think because we’ve been growing and attracting some major clients, there’s been a buzz in the marketplace about Masterplan, and that has made it easier for us to recruit. Also, we can offer a career path to biomeds because we can cross-train them into different modalities, and then offer them a path up through our company. We’re a growing national company, and there are a lot of opportunities to move forward in a career.

24×7: Berkshire Partners recently began supplying growth capital for Masterplan. What is your relationship, and how did the partnership come about?

Winn: The private equity firm that owned us for a number of years, TCR, made a lot of strategic investments and helped take the company to this stage. But it was in the 11th year of a 10-year fund, so it was under a lot of pressure to exit and hand it over to someone else. There was a lot of interest in Masterplan, and Berkshire stepped up. It has a 20-year track record of taking healthy, successful companies and turning them into market leaders.

24×7: What are the benefits for hospitals to outsource as opposed to having biomeds working in-house?

Winn: On one level, the benefit of outsourcing is that we’re a focused company—this is the only thing we do, and we do it very well. We are able to establish best practices and make sure that those practices are implemented at all of the facilities across the country. But on another level, we’ve made some particular investments that are attractive to our customers. Our I-Desk operating system gives our hospitals the same transparency into what’s happening that we have. We have remote diagnostics that allow us to get into computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging equipment and see the same images that the technicians and doctors are seeing. More importantly, we’re able to preempt problems. We can recognize problems before they arise and prevent downtime. And also, because we have a database across many hospitals, across all brands over many years, and because we’re vendor neutral, we can help with planning and budgeting without bias.

24×7: What do you think biomeds will have to learn in the coming years in order to stay on top?

Winn: The trend toward more sophisticated imaging is going to continue. The second trend is the blurring of the interface between clinical engineering and IT. In the future, biomeds and engineers are going to have to be savvier about that interface, and companies will have to get smarter about that. Also, with the growing complexity of technology, companies like ours are going to have to be increasingly competent at helping hospitals understand where technology’s going, how to manage that, and how to plan for it.

Zac Dillon is associate editor of  24×7. Contact him at .