Our Brief History

1. In December of 1994, Dr. Ajam (an educator) and Dr. Haddad (a neurosurgeon) conceived the idea of developing a computer-based patient education system that informs patients about the benefits and risks of recommended neurosurgical procedures and documents the informed consent process. The specifications of X-Plain were clear then and still hold now.
   “Develop a patient education system that:
   • can be used by all patients, even the illiterate and those with no computer experience,
   • engages patients and encourages them to complete their assigned topic,
   • verifies understanding and corrects misconceptions
   • adapts to the learning style and pace of the patient, and
   • documents the educational session and can re-play years later exactly as it happened.”


2. On May 1st of 1995, the Patient Education Institute was established after the Board of Regents at the University of Iowa approved its location on campus at the Technology Innovation Center. The Patient Education Institute worked with medical contributors from the University of Iowa and our first pilot sites were at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and at the University of Bloomington, Indiana.


3. After the remarkable success of the X-Plain Patient Education and Documentation System in serving neurosurgery clinics in 1996, many healthcare providers joined the Patient Education Institute team as investors and medical contributors. In 1997, we did a private placement and expanded into other surgical specialties. (see our 1995 promo video)




4. In 1998, we developed X-Plain for Waiting Room Kiosks.


5. In 1999 we started converting all of our X-Plain modules to the web. We finished the conversion by the end of 2000 and we survived the dot com era (or we missed it)! X-Plain for Practice Websites was born.


6. In 2000, we licensed our X-Plain for Health Web Portal to the National Library of Medicine. NLM continues to license some of our libraries for MedlinePlus where they receive millions of hits every year.


7. In 2001 we translated all of our X-Plain modules to Spanish. The Spanish X-Plain software was offered without additional charge to all subscribing clients.


8. By 2002, our library of interactive multimedia tutorials was large enough to become attractive for hospital-wide solutions. X-Plain for Hospital Websites was released.


9. In 2003, our online learning management system for patient education was adopted by Honeywell Corporation for its staff training.


10. In 2004, X-Plain for Employee Health Web Portal was born and we had our first employee wellness partner, SimplyWell.


11. In 2005, HCA, the largest private health system in the USA with more than 200 hospitals and medical centers, adopted our X-Plain for Informed Consent and Pre-Op.


12. In 2006, we implemented X-Pain at Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO in the USA. To-date, they use X-Plain for Hospital Bedside Computers.


13. In 2007, we implemented X-Plain for Hospital TVs at Adventist Health.


14. In 2008, we partnered with Cerner who integrated X-Plain software with their Millenium™ and CareAware myStation™ healthcare solutions.


15. In 2009, we released X-Plain for Hospital Marketing. We also translated X-Plain modules to Arabic and marketed them in the Gulf Cooperation Council (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia).