Serial entrepreneur Richard Bagdonas is the type of guy who prefers a hug to a handshake. That warmth has helped him build a strong network of family, friends and professional connections in Austin and beyond.
So when Bagdonas was diagnosed with stage four lymphatic cancer and a dramatically shortened life expectancy in 2018, he had a lot of people to break the news to in addition to finding the best possible treatment and care.
He tried to get everyone on the same page by authoring a piece on Medium that told his story of cancer discovery and other insights into how he was doing. He could see people were reading it and figured that would help reduce the inflow of questions, suggestions and referrals. It didn't.
"That was frustrating because the calls, texts and emails started coming back, and we were trying to navigate my cancer treatment, getting into the clinical trial, dealing with just the whole mess of it," he said.
Today, Bagdonas is cancer free, thanks in large to a clinical trial at MD Anderson and a lot of hard work. But that wouldn't be his last brush with death. In June 2020, Bagdonas was diagnosed with Covid-19, which put him in the hospital on a ventilator. This time he was isolated, and communication became even more difficult on spotty hospital Wi-Fi, an especially difficult thing since he knew he might not ever get to see family and friends again.
Through carefully measured breathing and oxygen monitoring, Bagdonas overcame Covid and was among a relatively small group at the time to have once been on a ventilator but not deteriorate further. Again, he had a lot of catching up to do with a lot of people — now during a pandemic that forced everyone to isolate.
"So there was no way for us to just to say, 'Oh, come on over to the house on Sunday and we'll chat and catch up,'" Bagdonas said. "So I took some technology that I had built for a different purpose to use SMS messaging. And I reconfigured it to allow me to send a text message to a phone number, and then that phone number would relay individual messages to each of the friends and family that had wanted to get updates. And then I hooked it up to where people could send a text message back in, saying 'hi,' and it would instantly subscribe them so they didn't even have to worry about it. I could publish this number and say 'If you want to know what's going on, you'll get these things in real time.'"
With that, ReplyAll Health was born. The SMS-based texting service acts like a private network for a patient and/or their caregiver to provide updates to other family and friends and have one-on-one communication. That eliminates the cross-talk among others who get updates, simplifying the exchanges. It also saves the patient from the overwhelming flow of replies that happen in group texting or Facebook groups by gathering all replies into a digest that the patient and caregiver can read at their leisure. Since it operates over SMS, it tends to work even with very limited cellular connections and supports shared photos.
"It's kind of interesting how people will start out with just a few close friends and family when they start using ReplyAll Health," he said. "But over the course of a month, we see it jump from, you know, five to six people up to 20, 30, 40, 50 people."
Bagdonas — who previously co-founded SubtleData, Remote Operations, Mahana and Twinedge — hasn't raised any venture funding for ReplyAll Health.. He said that if he does raise capital, it would be with the caveat that the product remain focused on patients and keep costs as low as possible.
"I don't want somebody to force us into an acquisition where we end up having to turn this off for patients because somebody wants to use it internally for their organization," he said.
Meanwhile, he's in discussions with hospitals and other care providers about white-labeling ReplyAll Health so that they can offer it to all of their patients without it appearing to be a third-party product.
The interest in SMS communications has also spawned new ideas for Bagdonas, including using the technology to help doctors and patients communicate throughout clinical trials and to help sports organizations communicate schedules and rainouts.
The sports organization idea has already been turned into its own offshoot: Sportzcaster.
"We're building things like if a parent sends a message to the number that says, 'when's the next game?' we can send them that message without even having to go to the coach," he said. "We can reduce the pressure on the coach, and say, 'Oh, the next game is next Saturday at this ball field.' If the practice is moved, and they say, 'oh, when's the next practice?' as long as the coach has given us that information and their schedule, we can keep them up to date with when the next game is, when's the next practices. In fact, we can even send reminders."
Bagdonas said the SMS approach could also spin out a third service focused on helping parents-to-be communicate with family and friends about pregnancy, delivery and post-birth plans.
He has other ideas, as well. One of them is already in use. Bagdonas is using the platform to help fellow cyclists in the CapTex Cruisers coordinate meetups and help later arrivals catchup with the other riders.
"Even if it's something that they only need to use for a few weeks, saving that headache and that hassle is super simple — you sign up for it, you use it," he said. "We just make stress go away regarding communication when you need it the most."
