As a college student at Harvard University, Dr. John R. Adler, Jr. was captivated by the way surgery was done in science fiction shows.
It didn’t involve scalpels or stitches. Instead, physicians directed beams of energy to treat patients without pain or recovery time. That idea stuck with him.
Years later, he would help bring a version of futuristic surgery into reality with an invention called CyberKnife®, an innovative radiosurgery system that uses precisely targeted radiation to treat tumors without a single incision. Working as a neurosurgeon had shown him that a non-invasive alternative to conventional surgery could be a game-changer for patients with complex or inoperable tumors.
Big medical device companies on the other hand, weren’t as convinced that CyberKnife was a worthwhile investment. For three years, Adler received one rejection after the next. It became apparent to Adler that bringing his vision of the future of medicine to life would require more than a medical degree – he’d need to figure out the business side, as well.
“My ideas were too radical, but I felt that radiosurgery is too good to be denied,” he explained. “I realized the only way to accomplish this was to do a start-up.”
And so, Adler began his journey as a “reluctant entrepreneur.” He raised a round of funding from friends, family and other neurosurgeons who believed in the potential of his work. With their support, he launched his first company, Accuray, to commercialize the CyberKnife.
It wasn’t easy. He spent years navigating funding challenges, regulatory hurdles and skepticism from the medical establishment before CyberKnife gained real traction. Along the way, he also needed to learn how to run a company, an entirely different skill set from his training in medicine. It was a difficult act of balancing research and development with human resources and compliance.
But the payoff was worth it. To date, more than one million patients have received treatment with technology from Accuray. Yet even that milestone didn’t feel close enough to Adler’s vision of “sci-fi”-style surgery.
“I believe that radiosurgery is a miracle of medicine. We can remove tumors non-invasively, painlessly, really cost effectively and with very little risk, and yet we're reaching less than one in 10 patients,” Adler says.
That gap in access was too big to ignore, so Adler founded yet another start-up in 2014, ZAP Surgical Systems. The business is working to bring his newest invention, the ZAP-X®, to life. The technology eliminates some of the expensive barriers of other radiosurgery systems, like the need for heavy radiation shielding and rare cobalt, making it easier for more hospitals to offer non-invasive brain surgery. He set a goal of using ZAP-X to treat 10 times as many patients as his last start-up, but to reach that kind of scale, he needed a business foundation strong enough to support it.
That’s where TriNet comes in. Their full-service HR solutions help handle payroll, provide compliance support and offer access to benefits for small to medium businesses, so they can focus on their true purpose.
“There’s all kinds of compliance requirements, harassment discussions and complex negotiations with healthcare providers that are just beyond the capability of a small company. TriNet helps me as a little company have the resources of a big company,” says Adler. “The focus of my company has to be on research and development, sales and getting through FDA regulations.”
That’s not to say HR isn’t important to Adler, quite the opposite. It’s critical to making sure employees get a competitive benefits package and the support they need to thrive. But with TriNet, he doesn’t need to get bogged down in the details.
“I don’t spend much time thinking about it,” Adler notes. “I think more about TriNet benefits as an employee than I do as CEO.”
With TriNet’s back-office support, ZAP is empowered to do more – treating five million patients is just the beginning of what they can achieve. It allows Adler to spend his energy pushing his technology into new frontiers, like using precision radiation to potentially treat addiction, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
“When this same type of treatment is delivered to very small regions of the brain in much smaller doses, it can actually change the function of the brain without damaging it,” he explained. “I believe this could be a huge breakthrough in the treatment of mental illness.”
The futuristic care that once seemed light years away is now part of Adler’s everyday work. He hopes that one day, a version of the ZAP-X might find its way aboard a spaceship – and that the companies he built, however reluctantly, will be a transformative influence on healthcare of the future.
Learn more about why TriNet is a must-have HR solution for businesses with a purpose. Visit trinet.com.
