SHOOK CULTURE: HOW MX CREATED A COMPANY CULTURE THAT SAVES LIVES.

• Author: Griffin, Elle
• Position: Cover story

Brandon Dewitt was about to die. According to his doctors, he had developed a rare form of cancer with no treatment options available. He was given seven months to live. If that.

The thing is, Mr. Dewitt was not ready to "go gentle into that good night." In fact, he was much more inclined toward the second half of that poem: "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

As the cofounder and chief technology officer at MX, Mr. Dewitt had a superpower at his disposal: a team of intelligent and able-bodied engineers. At their next weekly meeting, founder and CEO, Ryan Caldwell disclosed the details of Mr. Dewitt's prognosis and created a Dropbox folder containing all of his health data. From there, team members had the information they needed to conduct research on their own.

Starting with Google and Wikipedia, then expanding from there, the team was able to uncover a number of trials that might be a match for Mr. Dewitt's diagnosis. Several team members worked to aggregate the data coming in from the team, and their executive assistant began calling scientists and doctors to see which clinical trials Mr. Dewitt could get into.

Eventually, the team had created a several part plan, with options A, B, C, and D. Option A, a clinical trial in Boston, didn't work. Option B, a clinical trial in Seattle, did. During the six weeks Mr. Dewitt participated, engineers from his company spent one-week shifts visiting him, keeping him company during the treatment process. "They were working remotely," Mr. Dewitt says, "but it was also about 'how do I help you? How do I encourage your spirit?'"

It's been three years. Mr. Dewitt still has cancer, but it's asymptomatic and he has been given far more time than was originally granted. And though there were several health professionals who greatly contributed to his survival, he credits his life to a team of engineers, a bunch of techies who normally write code for a living.

His story is a miracle. But it's not the only one.

BIG HEARTED

Two years later Mr. Caldwell faced a similar medical emergency. After taking his two-year-old daughter to the emergency room with a routine stomach flu, her heart began to race. Soon after, her heart stopped. Medical professionals performed 47 minutes of CPR before, as a last resort, placing her on life support. She went through three surgeries that day, the final of which was all but guaranteed not to work. When she miraculously made it through the surgery, she was given a two in 1,000 chance of recovery.

But Mr. Caldwell had been...