The inspiration for health-tech startup OmniLife was born out of very personal and individual experiences for co-founders Dalton Shaull and Eric Pahl.
Shaull, a former Division I athlete, suffered a career-ending injury from a near-fatal motorcycle accident. The crash left his right arm paralyzed. He eventually underwent an experimental nerve transplant and has since regained full movement in his arm.
After Pahl's aunt died waiting for a liver transplant, he began studying the organ allocation system to better understand how it works.
The pair connected during their time at the University of Iowa through the shared interest and purpose in medical technology as it related to organ and tissue transplant. And in 2017, they launched OmniLife to help solve a problem.
Shaull said the OmniLife platform was created to be provider focused to help health-care workers communicate about and track an organ's location. He said this helps get the organ from point A to point B safely and more efficently.
"During the transplant process, communication is usually haphazard ... Seven percent of organs are lost because of logistics mistakes because there's no real system for sharing information around an organ or coordinating logistical efforts," he said. "The OmniLife platform's focus is increasing productivity and efficiency for frontline staff."
The platform has three aspects: a HIPPA compliant communications tool; an automated workflow system that alerts the team as an organ is in transport; and a network module that helps to build a trusted network by allowing users to procure a surgeon or organ recovery team.
A $2 million Small Business Innovation Research grant through the National Institutes of Health allowed them to build out the platform.
"We want to continue to grow rapidly," he said. "We have 20 institutions on the platform; about half are paying customers, and the others are research institutions we have to have because of the study. We hope to convert them into customers eventually."
OmniLife is dual-headquartered in Charlotte and Lexington, Kentucky, a move Shaull said has helped to optimize the company's investment opportunities.
He said OmniLife has raised $5 million to date and recently decided to work on a bridge funding between its seed and Series A rounds. The bridge funding is through a crowdfunding campaign. Since going live in February, the campaign has raised $42,000.
Shaull said the decision to crowdfund before raising more traditional capital was due, in part, to the pandemic. It was also a nod, he said, to the company's B Corp certification, a designation that means OmniLife is a mission-based social impact business.
"We pivoted because of the funding challenges with Covid ... We needed a way to broaden our audience in a digital environment and in a more scalable way." he said. "We wanted to offer the opportunity to talk about our story and get those out in society to participate."
Shaull added, "There are a lot of people who receive organ and tissue donations who are walking about having a better life because of it. [The campaign] is almost as much a public awareness campaign as it is fundraising."
