Letter from the Founder & President of the Tula Foundation:
People often ask me why we do what we do at Tula. I'll give some personal background which may help to explain.
In 1991 I founded the software development company Mitra in Waterloo, Ontario. To begin with Mitra comprised three people: myself, my partner Larry Williamson and our one employee. Ten years later Mitra had over 400 employees and subsidiaries in the USA, Europe and Australia.
Mitra was a leader in the drive to modernize health care by improving the use of information technology. For example, we helped lead the development of standards and software that allowed hospitals to link medical imaging devices (X-ray machines, ultrasound, CT and MRI scanners, etc.) into local and regional networks, and so let physicians and specialists to move their analysis from film to computers.
Mitra played the role of flexible, agile, innovator in a marketplace dominated by large players with complementary skills: the equipment suppliers like General Electric, Siemens and Toshiba; plus professional bodies, hospital groups and governments.
Although Mitra was a for-profit company, we saw the work more as a calling than as a traditional business. We all felt we were using our respective talents to advance the common good, improving health care everywhere. Our attitude matched the spirit of the times, so despite our lack of obsession with profit, we thrived.
By 2002, the industry had matured and the concepts we had fought for had become standard practice. The focus was moving from sales to the early adopters to full-blown commercial deployment. There was at the same time a wave of consolidation, as the big companies snapped up the innovators and brought their expertise in house. I sensed that the time had come for me to step aside and allow Mitra to be acquired by an organization with more strength in the marketplace.
Upon the sale of Mitra I immediately established Tula with the goal of continuing on in the same spirit, but in a new setting:
• I would pursue only non-profit ventures.
• I would look for new areas, but initially for areas where my past expertise could be applied. (For example, at Mitra we had worked to improve health care systems, but had by necessity neglected low-income countries.)
Our first significant venture was our still-active health care initiative in northern Guatemala, a region I knew from my travels as a teenager in the 1960s. When we relocated to the coast of British Columbia--the place of my birth and always my spiritual home--we embarked on a number of additional projects described elsewhere on the website.
I thoroughly enjoy the work I do at Tula, for the same reason I loved the work at Mitra. Because of the stimulation I get from working with creative, ambitious, energetic, optimistic people who are dedicated to getting out into the field and getting things done.
Best regards,
Eric Peterson
P.S. People also ask me about the name ‘Tula’. I chose it in accordance with the principles laid down by George Eastman when he named Kodak: it’s short; it can’t be mispronounced; and it doesn’t mean anything at all.