Blog
The Customers and Conversations That Shaped Innovation
When Jeff Jacoby joined METI in 1999, the company was still focused on a single core product: the Human Patient Simulator.
Over the next 26 years, Jeff watched that small product portfolio grow into a much broader approach to healthcare simulation. Patient simulators expanded into new specialties and use cases, while new technologies brought ultrasound, debriefing, and other capabilities into the simulation environment.
For Jeff, much of that evolution came back to one thing: listening to customers.
“We wouldn’t build a product if a customer out there didn’t need it,” Jeff says.
That customer connection was especially evident through HPSN, the company’s healthcare simulation conference. HPSN brought educators and simulation professionals together not only to learn about the latest technology, but to share how they were using simulation in their own programs.
Those conversations often led to new ideas.
Customers could see how other institutions approached simulation, discover new ways to use their equipment, and bring those ideas back to their own programs. At the same time, employees across sales, engineering, and customer service had the opportunity to hear directly from the people using the technology every day.
For Jeff, that exchange was an important part of how the company continued to evolve.
The relationship went both ways. Customers shared what they needed, how they were using simulation, and where they saw opportunities. The company listened, learned, and used those insights to help shape what came next.
Looking back, Jeff sees that as one of the enduring strengths of the organization: the people using simulation have always been part of the conversation about where it goes next.
From one simulator to a growing portfolio of technologies and solutions, the evolution of healthcare simulation has been shaped not only by engineers and product teams, but by the educators and healthcare professionals who put those tools to work.
Jeff has been part of those conversations for more than two decades—and he’s still helping shape what comes next at Elevate Healthcare today.