Our Values

Focus
We take our mission statements seriously. We project them in all of our meetings and focus our goals and projects around them. Every opportunity presented to us is analyzed to determine if it fits our mission of empowering patients and healthcare providers through evidence-based engaging patient education.

Innovation
Our innovations have been described as "rebellious" and "paradigm shifts". It felt as if "we have been where no man has been before" when we introduced X-Plain PEDS in 1995 and accessibility features before Section 508 existed. We called for interactive learning and verifying comprehension, and with time, our positions have been vindicated. We are guided by visions of "how should patient education be and how can it capitalize on advances in technology and learning theory" rather than on "what sells now".

Globalization
"Globalization" as a term may have bad quonotations; but for us it means, "the physiology of human diseases are the same throughout the globe; its treatments ought to be the same, and patients’ rights to information and self-determination ought to be the same regardless of the cultural and political influences". We write our content with this global perspective in mind. If some of our clients have a different view, they can localize the content.

Flexibility
We are flexible in many aspects. With our clients, for instance, there are no minimum contractual terms, they can cancel anytime. Legal agreements are to communicate our promises and limitations but never to bind clients to pay for what they are not benefiting from.

With our partners, what matters first is to get our common clients to successfully implement and benefit from our combined solutions; the details can always be negotiated or amended after our success.

With our employees, it is the ultimate flexibility. Most of our employees set their own schedules, can browse the Internet when they want, take long lunches or as many breaks as they want. What matters to management is for them to communicate their plans and get them approved, then they are left to achieve their goals within the deadlines and without the traditional work boundaries of place and time.

Loyalty
We are loyal to all of our clients and partners, but particularly to the early adopters who shared our vision and helped us shape our products.

We, employees, are loyal to each other. We are one team crossing barriers, discovering frontiers, and every single member of the team matters to the success of our mission.

We are loyal to our investors who believed in our vision of health care and education, and trusted the judgement of our executives and their strategies.

Self-actualization
We are a place to grow; after all it is the motto of our state! It is our promise to our employees to help them learn, grow, and prosper in their careers. It is our promise to our thought leaders to help them self-actualize by providing them with the opportunity to conduct research, publish, mentor, and dissiminate their thoughts and innovations.

Transparency
"What you see is what you get" – except that we do live by the motto "under-promise and over-deliver". We are blessed with the honesty and work ethics of the Midwest. After all, it is the reason we choose to locate our headquarters in Iowa City and endure the long winters!