SYRACUSE — Emergency room visits can be costly, even for people with good health insurance, says Michael Ehrhart, so it makes sense to use urgent care or even a pharmacy’s clinic if you can.

“The hospital doesn’t want you in the emergency room if you aren’t critically ill. You don’t want to be there because of the wait and cost. There are alternatives,” he says.

Helping patients find those alternatives was part of the motivation behind the creation of Welloh, a mobile app that provides information about hospitals, convenient care facilities, and pharmacies using a smartphone’s GPS-determined location.

“It’s kind of like Yelp for urgent care,” Ehrhart says.

Ehrhart and partner George Smith, II have decades of experience in the medical device field. Ehrhart was with Welch Allyn, as chief technology officer. Smith was in business development with Welch Allyn and also was an adjunct professor at Syracuse University’s law school. They both worked at Hand Held Products, the medical device business sold to Honeywell in 2007.

In 2015, the two teamed up to create Watch Hill Solutions, a technology startup. The Welloh app is the company’s first product.

The app was launched in December 2017 and has been downloaded by hundreds of users from the Apple App Store and Google Play, Ehrhart says. 

Smith and Ehrhart say the app is being developed and improved as they see how people are actually using it. Noticing that users would download the app, but rarely turn to it, they added daily tips to give users a reason to engage the app, even if they didn’t need immediate medical care.

If they do, the app provides a list of hospitals, urgent care centers, and pharmacies within 33 miles.

Along with the address and a link to directions, each listing comes with a star rating.

At this point, those star ratings are based on public reviews found on Google. Smith and Ehrhart say they want to add feedback from Welloh users and eventually just depend on the app’s users for all ratings.

They also want to expand the types of facilities included in the app. Ehrhart explains that when patients see a doctor and is told to get a blood test, X-ray, or other follow-up work, they must decide where to go.

That’s a decision that used to be made for patients, he says. They’d go down the hall in the doctor’s office or maybe to a lab or imaging center the doctor recommended. Now the choice is theirs.

But, Ehrhart asks, how do patients know which lab or imaging center to use? It matters, he says, because the cost difference between a free-standing center and one that is part of a hospital can be a factor of 10.

Smith and Ehrhart say they would like to add out-patient surgery centers as well, giving consumers information they could use to choose between different centers and local hospitals that provide the same procedures.

Costs are more important than ever before for health-care consumers, Ehrhart says, because high-deductible health-insurance policies mean individuals are finding themselves responsible for paying the first part of many health-care bills. “Because of high-deductable plans we think people will be looking for options to keep out-of-pocket costs down,” he says.

But the target audience for Welloh isn’t just cost-conscious consumers. Travelers are a prime group for whom the app would be handy, Smith and Ehrhart say.

They picture someone visiting a new place suddenly finding themselves in need of medical attention. For them, the app with its ratings and directions would remove a lot of the mystery.

That opens a marketing opportunity for the app as well, the two say. Conventions, fairs and other large gatherings could recommend visitors download the app to make their visit less stressful. 

“Picture 40,000 bowlers with the app,” Smith says, referring to the United States Bowling Congress (USBC) tournament being held in Syracuse this year.

Human-resource professionals could be helpful in making people aware of the app, the two men say. When employees need to make a health-care spending decision, HR people could suggest the app as a way to make the employees more aware of their choices.

Likewise, parents are a prime target, what with the number of scrapes, bruises and more serious injuries active children suffer. That doesn’t just apply to small children. Smith and Ehrhart say the app has found acceptance among college students.

As more people use the app and provide reviews of the providers they encounter, Smith expects the app to grow more useful. “A few million users and this is the health-care magazine. Welloh becomes kind of a trusted adviser,” he says.

Regarding trust, the two say the app shares only the user’s location, when it searches for information. All other information remains private, they say.

Ehrhart and Smith launched the app with help from angel investors, a Rochester firm called Scriptable Solutions that wrote the program, and online market research that showed interest in the information the app could provide.

The only income stream from Welloh at this point is advertising, though they may add a premium version in the future, they add.

Smith and Ehrhart are now focusing on getting more people to learn about Welloh, utilizing social media and online ads. Ehrhart says the goal is to reach 10,000 users by the end of the year and 5 million by the end of 2020.

Beyond that goal, Ehrhart says, “our big ambition is to help make patients more like consumers.”

SYRACUSE — The firm that won the $1 million grand prize in the second installment of the Genius NY business-accelerator competition plans to use the funding to “accelerate” its operations.

That’s according to Christopher McCall, CEO of Fotokite, who spoke with CNYBJ following the April 9 awards ceremony in Syracuse.

The prize will help “…build the presence here, to move faster toward real-world solutions in this space. We’re all about trying to get to the application and try to get to the real end-users and customers and help them in their missions,” says McCall.

Fotokite, a firm based in Switzerland, was one of six Genius NY finalists that competed during the competition’s pitch night held April 9 at the Marriot Syracuse Downtown.

Fotokites are tethered drone systems that work like a 200-foot tower, “flying fully autonomously and deploying with the push of a button,” according to a description in the event program. Fotokite provides firefighters and fire departments with a “live aerial situational awareness tool to help them save lives and preserve property,” the description said.

Fotokite currently has 14 employees, including one in Syracuse, according to McCall. Most of its workers focus on research and development in Switzerland. Fotokite wants to assemble a sales and business-development team and manufacturing for a U.S.–made product.

“That’s exactly the mission that we came over here [for] and participated in the Genius NY program to achieve,” says McCall.

Genius NY stands for Growing ENtrepreneurs & Innovators in UpState New York.

The initiative is “one of the world’s largest business competitions focused on unmanned systems, cross-connected platforms and other technology-based sectors,” according to the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Genius NY, a year-long business accelerator, awarded six finalist teams a total of nearly $3 million at the pitch event. The awards included prizes of $1 million, $600,000, $400,000, and three $250,000 awards. 

Participants are required to operate their business in Central New York for at least one year. 

Empire State Development Corporation, New York’s primary economic-development agency, supports the Genius NY program. 

Other winners

In addition to Fotokite, Quantifly was awarded the second place prize of $600,000; TruWeather took third place, winning $400,000; while three finalists, UsPLM, Dropcopter, and Precision Vision all were awarded $250,000. TruWeather was also named the crowd favorite in a live poll taken during the event.

Besides Fotokite, CenterState CEO provided the following descriptions of the additional finalists selected for Genius NY 2.0.

• UsPLM of Syracuse “provides a collaborative environment for all stakeholders” to develop, test, deploy, and safely operate a single or a fleet of UAS. UsPLM can integrate UAS, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and product lifecycle management (PLM) technologies, “which is missing in the current UAS ecosystem.”

• Dropcopter of California is an agriculture technology startup that has developed patent-pending technology to allow farmers to pollinate orchards via drones. The recent decline of bee populations has raised pollination prices “significantly, creating a compelling” market for alternative technologies such as Dropcopter.

• Precision Vision of New Mexico creates image-processing technology that makes real-time precision imaging an “affordable reality.” Precision imaging locates each pixel at a known 2D or 3D referenced location in every image. The company says it has “unique” software and knowledge to provide “low-cost, real-time” precision imaging to open new markets.

• Quantifly of Michigan is an IoT product that “simplifies and reduces” the costs of parking and traffic studies through the unification of UAS, machine vision, and analytics by “eliminating human error, mitigating safety risks, and centralizing harvested data.” It is the “first to market,” and the firm’s product aims to be the “quintessential” app for urban planners focused on smart-city applications and sustainability.

• TruWeather of Virginia is building a service to “improve” the precision, accuracy and communication of weather intelligence specifically for the UAV enterprise. The company will develop, commercialize and market the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) weather risk management service for beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) UAV operations and offer it as a SaaS (software as a service) business.

SYRACUSE — The Upstate Minority Economic Alliance (UMEA) will host the inaugural Minority Women Business Enterprise (MWBE) Community Engagement Awards May 24.

The awards are a way to recognize individuals, companies and organizations that are working with minority-owned businesses, says UMEA Executive Director Rickey Brown.

The keynote speaker for the event will be Vaughn Irons, a Syracuse University (SU) graduate and CEO of APD Solutions, an Atlanta–based economic development firm.

Brown says the UMEA has grown rapidly, adding 100 new members since he became executive director in May 2017.

In a conference room at CenterState CEO, where his organization has its office as part of a shared services agreement, Brown explains that the UMEA helped minority-owned businesses put together applications for the state’s regional economic-development program. 

“We helped with $15 million in consolidated funding applications” in the last year, he says.

Brown, a Syracuse native who grew up in Florida but returned to Central New York to attend college at SU, says that UMEA’s work has helped land nearly $300,000 in Regional Economic Development Council funding for projects on South Avenue, Hawley Avenue, and on South Salina Street.

In addition, he says he has assisted businesses as they go through MWBE certification, a move that makes them eligible for preference in some government contracts.

The winners for the MWBE Community Engagement Awards have not yet been selected, Brown says, though the nominees have been whittled down to finalists. Categories include executive of the year, procurement professional of the year, community development project of the year, municipal procurement of the year, and MWBE business of the year.

Brown hopes that the awards event itself, to be held at the Marriott Syracuse Downtown, will help bring together minority business people as well as others who want to work with them. “It’s a platform to give regional presence to our members,” he says.

UMEA is an independent chamber of commerce, Brown says, covering a 16-county area, including Monroe and Onondaga counties. Its focus is on helping minorities as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, he notes. “A minority is anyone who is not single-race white and not Hispanic,” according to a 2012 information sheet from the Census Bureau. 

The MWBE Community Engagement Awards will be held from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at the Marriott Syracuse Downtown. For more information, email: rbrown@upstatemea.com

New York Office of General Services (OGS) Commissioner RoAnn Destito recently announced that XCL Construction Inc., a Cicero—based general construction firm has been certified as a service-disabled veteran-owned business (SDVOB).

The New York OGS Division of Service-Disabled Veterans’ Business Development (DSDVBD) issued the certification. The division was created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014 through enactment of the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Business Act. As of April 2, 2018, a total of 460 businesses in the Empire State have been certified, according to the state OGS.

The law promotes and encourages participation of SDVOBs in New York State public procurements of public works, commodities, services and technology to “foster and advance economic development” in the state.

For a business to receive certification, one or more service-disabled veterans — with a service-connected disability rating of 10 percent or more from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (or from the New York State Division of Veterans’ Affairs for National Guard veterans) — must own at least 51 percent of the business. Other criteria include: the business must be independently owned and operated and have a significant business presence in New York, it must have conducted business for at least one year prior to the application date, and it must qualify as a small business under the New York State program. Several more requirements also need to be met. 

More information on the program and the certification process can be found at http://ogs.ny.gov/Core/SDVOBA.asp or contact the DSDVBD at VeteransDevelopment@ogs.ny.gov or (518) 474-2015.