From research to CEO

Justin Mortara, 45, who joined the company in 1998, studied physics at the University of Chicago and then followed a professor to the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a doctorate focusing on neutrinos, fundamental particles that have no charge and little mass, and that are a mystery to almost everyone.

He eventually decided against a career in research.

“I was good,” he said, “but there were others who were better.”

A natural move would have been to work for a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. But his father offered him a job in Italy, and Justin Mortara gave it a try. He worked there for a year and discovered he liked the business.

In 2008, he became chief executive, freeing his father to focus on what he loves— working with the company’s engineers to improve the technology and develop new products.

Justin Mortara works out of a small office, where his desk faces a wall covered with photos and artwork from his children, who will be11, 7 and 5 this month.

“We are not big on palatial offices,” said Mortara, who serves on the boards of the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Milwaukee Ballet and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

Mortara Instrument, which now employs about 400 people, makes equipment for resting and stress electrocardiograms. Its products are sold to hospitals, cardiologists, primary care physicians and ambulance companies.

The company also has a profitable niche in clinical research, where its products are used to study the cardiac safety of new drugs.

The precision of the measurements from the company’s software, and the equipment’s ability to capture more data on its ambulatory monitors, are two of the company’s strengths, Mortara said.

The company’s products also are easy to use.

“That is what has separated them,” said Bob Mills, executive vice president of global sales and marketing for Biomedical Systems in St. Louis. “It’s very easy to train a site to use it.”

Mortara Instrument has worked to do the same with all its products, simplify each steptomakethemlessproneto error. It also was at the forefront of designing its products to interconnect with electronic health records, lessening the chance of error.

Last year, Mortara shipped more than 30,000 devices from the company’s two Milwaukee manufacturing sites, which employ about 175 people, including about 55 engineers.

“We are very proud that we build everything in Milwaukee,” said Webster.

The company plans to begin construction this year on a new factory across from its headquarters and factory at 7865 N. 86th St., consolidating its manufacturing at the Bradley Woods Business Park and then selling its factory at 8220 W. Sleske Court.

The company’s workforce has roughly doubled in the past five years, although part of the increase stemmed from buying a competitor’s product line.

In 2013, Mortara Instrument bought the Brudick and Quintin brands from Cardiac Science, a Waukesha company that is a unit of Opto Circuits Ltd. in Bangalore, India, for $21million.

Cardiac Science was a customer, buying components from Mortara Instrument.

“Weknewthecompanyvery well,” Mortara said.

The Brudick product line is strong in primary care, while Quintin is strong in primary and acute care.

Mortara Instrument, which now sells electrocardiography equipment under all three brands, had a limited presence in primary care.

“It’s was a very nice match,” Webster said. “It opened up new markets for us.”

Big name competition

The company’s two biggest competitors are GE Healthcare and Philips N.V., and Mortara Instrument has to give customers a reason not to go with them.

That’s going to be true with Mortara Instrument’s push to enter the market for bedside patient monitors.

“We see that as a major market for us in coming years,” Webster said.

The company recently won approval for a mobile monitor that it hopes gives it a competitive advantage.

The mobile monitor, which is designed to work with its two bedside monitors, uses a proprietary telemetry system based on Wi-Fi technology. That means hospitals don’t have to lay wire for mobile monitors and can have coverage throughout the hospital.

“The cost savings are dramatic,” Webster said.

Another selling point could be the company’s software for electrocardiography. The software is one of the hardest pieces to get right in bedside monitors, Mortara said.

When done well, the software identifies the abnormalities that matter and not the ones that don’t. That reduces the number of false alarms and the lessens the problem of alarm fatigue common in intensive care units.

The company hopes its mobile monitor and software will enable it to compete against established competitors, such as GE Healthcare, Philips and Spacelabs Healthcare.

“It’s nothing that is going to happen overnight,” Webster said.