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Turun UK is in the unsexy business of selling patient monitoring devices to hospitals and nursing homes.

Its depressing to think about, but some elderly people gradually lose their wits to the point where they might wander away from their nursing homes.  Monitoring devices alert nursing home staff if a person has wandered off or if they’ve fallen while going to the bathroom.

So what’s so awesome about this business?

#3.  Its real-life Global

Turun UK is the British subsidiary of Turun International, based in Lincoln NE.  Most of its products are manufactured in China by a Japanese inventor.   This is a real life example of globalism.  Not global financial conspiracies.  Not abstract jobs getting “shipped off” from one place to another.  This is how globalism works in real life.  And that’s cool.

#2  The products perform a critical function

Without monitoring, patients with dementia are at risk of horrible things.  In one case, a patient froze to death after wandering away from his nursing home in the cold of winter.  Another patient laid on the cold floor of her bathroom at night for 8 hours after falling.  And a man walked in front of a train and died after leaving his hospital – its not clear what his true intent was.  Basic monitoring devices alert nursing staff before events like these happen.  That’s not just cool, its critical.

#1.  They understand their value proposition.

There are several “customers” for patient monitoring devices.  There are administrators who want to contain costs and control the average number of accidents in their facilities.  There are nurses who want to provide good care for patients they are responsible for.  There are family members who want assurance that their loved ones are safe, secure and reasonably happy.

This is the non-obvious cool part:  The value proposition for monitoring devices in lies in their ability to reduce the concern and worry of caregivers.  The business value is not about how useful the devices are to the patients.  Its not about the logical benefits nurses and administrators can appreciate in the light of day.

The value lies in reducing what those customers worry about at night.

Is mom safe right now?  What if she falls?

Are my patients in bed where they should be?  Have they left their room?  Will we know if they do?

So to sell these devices, Turun explains the benefits in those emotional terms.  Elder care is not simply a dollars and cents business, and Turun understands that.

Not all businesses are as cool as Turun.  Some like Apple are sexier.  Some like Proctor and Gamble are bigger.  But Turun is able to understand what emotions drive its customers and provides them with life-saving products by managing an international network of suppliers and distributors.  It does this all from Lincoln, Nebraska.

And that’s pretty damn cool.