by Julia Paulus Ogilvie
Despite any challenges brought forth from ever growing competition in the entrepreneurial marketplace, the following four entrepreneurs
have developed ideas that are too good to ignore. Keep an eye on the 2015 Ones to Watch. They are poised to beat the odds in
business while improving the community.
Helping Health Practices Manage Compliance/Sarah Badahman, HIPAAtrek
Having spent a decade in the health care field in a variety of roles – from human resources to practice administration to security – Sarah Badahman was more than familiar with the common complications of walking the line between health care system administration and HIPAA compliance. HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
According to Badahman, when Meaningful Use, a financial incentive program for health care organizations to show they are “meaningfully using” their certified technology by meeting certain measurement thresholds, came out, practice administrations had to learn how to use it, and even greater complications arose. Colleagues of Badahman’s began asking her for help with the HIPAA component. “I realized that I could make money consulting,” she says.
Soon after, when Badahman attended an industry conference, she realized how far-reaching the problem truly was and just how many administrators she could potentially help. “I realized I couldn’t have clients all over the country but that developing a software could solve the problem,” says Badahman. “I saw a need for a tool to manage HIPAA compliance through software.”
That’s when Badahman decided to develop a nonintrusive product to help small to medium-sized health care practices through HIPAA compliance and the workflow caused by it, and her company, HIPAAtrek, was born. “Our mission is to help health care organizations to create, implement and manage customized HIPAA compliance programs,” she says. “We are a Sherpa to help companies through the process.”
Badahman’s goal is to make HIPAA accessible and affordable to small and medium-sized practices. “We want to make staying HIPAA-compliant less scary and daunting without overtaxing the health care industry,” she says. “The big problem is that health care providers are required to use expensive tools that don’t solve problems completely.”
While HIPAAtrek only started in May 2014, it already has 56 organizations using its platform. “Like many startups, reaching people is the challenge we’re experiencing,” she says.
However, the proven need for the HIPAAtrek product and its founder’s firsthand experience make the company stand out from its competitors. “I was a practice administrator,” says Badahman. “I understand what our customers go through on a daily basis and I know that it’s hard to always think about HIPAA compliance, but you have to. I know what the workflow is like and that it’s easy to be pulled away. I want customers to be HIPAA-compliant with the tools necessary.”
Improving Community Safety/Lindsey Silva, Blue Line Security Solutions
As a self-driven software developer, Marcos Silva spent his spare time developing different programs and solutions for everyday use. While Silva, a U.S. Army veteran, 2005 Chemical Soldier of the Year for the United States Chemical Corps and detective of intelligence with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, developed various ideas, it struck him that he should combine his extensive computer knowledge with his unique background.
“Over the years he has been developing program ideas for facial recognition for small businesses and projects that could possibly aid in various types of prevention strategies,” says Lindsey Silva, Marcos’ wife, a former deputy sheriff for the city of St. Louis and operations manager of Blue Line Security Solutions.
Silva’s focus soon turned to facial recognition software that would prohibit unwanted visitors from entering specific areas while allowing its users to monitor threats. “Through his current and former police officers he pitched the concept to them, and we began a business proposal,” says Silva. “Our vision was first crime prevention. We could really see a need for this in schools, day cares and court buildings.”
From this concept and the Silvas’ partnership with Thomas Sawyer, who has more than 21 years of police and investigative experience, and Joseph Spiess, a retired major of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department with more than 30 years of experience, Blue Line Security Solutions was born. “Our mission is to offer this unique product for protection and control using First Line Facial Recognition, which will provide prevention and immediate reaction to threats, employee management and accounting, improved access control, and concierge services,” says Silva.
The partners’ No. 1 goal today is to offer their product to the everyday consumer. “Several facial recognition applications are site-specific and costly to the consumer,” says Silva. “We want to see this product in small business, schools and demonstrate the capabilities of the services we offer.”
The team at Blue Line Security sees its product playing a vital role in reducing workplace domestic violence and unwanted visitors in restricted areas and improving employee accountability.
Improving Job Placement Outcomes/Chris Motley, Better Weekdays
Having been the first in his family to go to college, let alone business school, Chris Motley’s graduation from Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree in history and the Kellogg School of Management with an MBA, concentration in entrepreneurship, prompted a lot of reflection. “When I thought about how I serendipitously landed into an executive position at a midmarket company that few had ever heard of, I started to ask, Why should one have to rely on serendipity?” says Motley. “Couldn’t technology create serendipity for job seekers? Couldn’t it also create it for companies with little brand visibility so that they can recruit great talent?”
That was the moment when Motley started to figure out how to solve this problem, and he pitched the idea at Startup Weekend Chicago in 2011. “While we didn’t win, the judges seemed very encouraged with the idea, and I’ve spent the last three years figuring out a sustainable business model,” he says.
That model has turned into Better Weekdays, a cloud-based career management software platform that enables universities to improve job placement outcomes among graduates and allows businesses to effectively target their employer brands and job advertisements to job seekers that are compatible with both the job and the corporate culture. “Better Weekdays’ mission is to provide meaningful connections between job seekers and employers by providing a private platform for career management to ensure young professionals are gainfully employed post-college and to enable companies to attract and retain talent,” says Motley.
Motley hopes that by using more and better data at the beginning of the recruiting process, Better Weekdays will become a market leader in career management software that enhances university career center operations and workforce development initiatives at companies.
“Our technology helps companies to objectively understand the characteristics of their best people to inform future hiring decisions,” he says. “We can effectively capture the career ‘DNA’ of students and graduates and combine it with that of live job opportunities based on millions of actual job transitions. Every incremental interaction on the site improves the matching algorithm to ensure that Better Weekdays’ clients are matched with the best-fit applicants, thereby improving the job placement rates of the company’s university partners.”
Innovation That Saves Lives/Abu Abraham, Zymplr
A few years ago, while earning his MBA at Washington University, Abu Abraham had his first taste of entrepreneurship when he helped develop a health care startup. Soon after this experience, Abraham decided to combine his professional expertise in mechanical and materials engineering with his interest in ownership to address the growing problem of concussions in professional sports.
With two partners, Abraham Pannikottu and Gabe Santa Cruz, Abraham founded Zymplr. “About two years ago when the issue of concussions started coming to the forefront, we knew a material that we had previously developed might be suitable,” says Abraham. “After going into the needs for reducing the impact forces that cause concussion, we came up with a modified version of that material that addresses these needs. Zymplr was born with a huge focus on reducing the concussive forces that impact football players.”
As Zymplr focuses on using advanced materials technology to make high-contact sports and sporting activities safer, the partners have begun to get positive results from their efforts. “If one person gets hit in football, it doesn’t take much to have an impact on the brain,” says Abraham. “If the hit is in line with their center of gravity, the brain moves back and forth. Current helmet regulation only asks for this linear motion to be addressed.”
Problems come into play, however, when the hit is off-center, causing a spinning motion on the brain. “By 2015 this rotation will need to be addressed by helmets,” says Abraham. “What we did is take the best helmet on the market and add our material to it. It reduces the rotational force being transferred onto the head by more than 40%. What we don’t know yet is the percentage by which this reduction will reduce concussions.”
Zymplr is now sharing its material technology with as many product manufacturers as possible to reduce impact forces. “We are currently working with a motorcycle helmet manufacturer in developing a motorcycle helmet using Zymplr technology,” says Abraham. “We’re putting our material into their helmets. Instead of just working on coming up with our own football helmet, we are working to partner with manufacturers to put our materials into existing helmets.”
Submitted 9 years 121 days ago