AkēLex was born out of a drive to help providers with limited resources and experience deliver the highest level of care available to the sickest patients in the health care system.  Our founder, Steve Datena, is a trauma surgeon who practiced in a level-one trauma referral center, caring daily for trauma patients transferred from smaller hospitals.  These patients often arrived in more serious condition than they should have because the care they received along the way was not what it could have been.

The providers there always did their best, but they were not familiar with critically ill trauma patients. And one critical patient could overwhelm the resources of a small emergency department.  Rather than play catch up when these patients arrived, Dr. Datena sought to help these clinicians and patients when they needed it most – during the Golden Hour, the first hour after the injury occurs when the patient is most vulnerable.

This meant finding a way to help the care teams that treated these patients in the Golden Hour, who themselves struggled to do better for their patients.  This necessity shaped Dr. Datena’s professional life and gave birth to AkēLex.