Ankota's rapid rise and relentless focus on ROI for its customers is recognized in SmartCEO Magazine's Annual Circle of Excellence Awards
 
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND - "We are thrilled to be named the HOT STARTUP by SmartCEO Magazine," said company CEO and co-founder, Will Hicklen. "SmartCEO follows the most dynamic companies in the Mid-Atlantic region-this is an exciting recognition that we are growing a successful company that addresses immediate needs for home healthcare companies," said Hicklen. SmartCEO's Circle of Excellence Awards event will be held on May 12, 2010 at the Intercontinental Harbor Court Hotel in Baltimore from 6:00-9:00p.m. Several customers and leaders in the healthcare community will join Ankota in the celebration.

"The secret to Ankota's early success is its relentless focus on immediate ROI for its clients-something the struggling healthcare industry can embrace," writes Jeanine Clingenpeel in the May 2010 feature story. Ankota's technology is usually self-funding in the first quarter of use. Customers typically see immediate reductions in certain operating expenses, increase their capacity with existing staff, and accelerate billing by days or even weeks.
 
"Circle of Excellence winners are not only selected and honored for their accomplishments, but for demonstrating success in applying unique leadership attributes that significantly benefits their business and the community," said Craig Burris, Publisher at SmartCEO Magazine. "We are honored to recognize Will Hicklen as one of Greater Baltimore's standout leaders." The full article is available online http://www.smartceo.com/content/digitalba0510
Hicklen credits the company's early success to an all-star leadership team that includes Dr. Hunter Young, a physician at Johns Hopkins and the company's Chief Medical Officer, Ken Accardi, Chief Technology Officer and veteran CIO from GE Healthcare, and Marc Ottinger, formerly of Anderson Consulting, who is COO. Ankota is Hicklen's fourth software startup, the last, iLumin, was successfully sold to Computer Associates.
 
The idea for Ankota came to Will while helping his wife, Sandy, during her three year battle with cancer. Hicklen's frustrations over coordinating her care illuminated an inefficient system with tremendous opportunity to improve care planning and execution.
 
His 20+ years experience with supply chain technologies and business performance management gave him a unique perspective. "There are great people in healthcare who are very committed to what they do, but they are saddled with a system that forces them to spend time doing unproductive things. This is incredibly inefficient and costly to the system." Adding, "These are problems that we have solved in other industries."
 
About Ankota: Ankota is the pioneering company in the field of Healthcare Delivery Management (HDM), focused on improving the quality and efficiency of health care outside of the hospital. HDM is a process-centric, technology-enabled approach to managing the "delivery model," automating complex scheduling requirements and optimizing scarce resources such as people, time, equipment, and supplies.

Customers include Home Health Care, Private Duty, Home Infusion, Respiratory Therapy, Home Medical Equipment (HME/DME) providers, and more.

Founded in 2008 and launched in 2009, Ankota, Inc. is based in Baltimore, Maryland with offices in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis. For more information please go to http://ankota.com