When Louisville nurse Vanessa Williams-Harvey came up with the idea to create an electronic health record training platform, she wanted to bring it to market stat.
“I was naive enough to think two years ago … that in three or four months, we’d be up and running,” Williams Harvey said. “I needed to learn my market. I needed to develop a strategy. I needed to learn how to be an entrepreneur, basically. … I wasn’t ready for prime-time then.”
Two years later, Williams-Harvey says she and her startup DUES24 are ready for the bright lights, with plans to launch its first product July 1.
Beginning in 2014, health care providers were required to demonstrate “meaningful use” of EHRs in order to maintain Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Today, more than 96% of hospitals use EHRs, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
The problem, Williams-Harvey said, is that while nurses and clinicians are expected to use EHRs on day one of their jobs, most aren’t trained on the systems in school.
“These clinical students are required to take care of patients (while in school) just like a nurse or a therapist. However, when the student is in training they don’t have access many times to the electronic health record due to security, risk or resources. Basically, the student is pretty low on the totem pole,” Williams-Harvey said. “We wanted an avenue for these students to get this training and experience while they’re in school so they’ve learned the full complement of their roles.”
DUES24’s (which stands for "Do better. Understand better. Expect better. Serve best. 24/7.") platform enables students in training environments, such as clinical rotations, to enter patient information, learn EHR navigation, enter vital signs and create clinical notes. Williams-Harvey said the application, called HippoCLIN, is HIPAA compliant and can teach students how to use any of the EHR’s on the market.
The company will launch its beta test in Louisville next month, with plans to expand to the rest of the state two months later, Williams-Harvey said.
DUES24 is marketing its platform to nursing schools, health systems and workforce development programs. While the startup has yet to sign any clients, it does have a verbal commitment, Williams-Harvey said.
The program was developed thanks to $70,000 in funding from a series of investments, the largest of which is a $50,000 investment from Keyholes Capital in December. DUES24 also received $5,000 from Render Capital’s First Dollar program and $15,000 through a partnership between Amplify Louisville and Founder Forward.
Williams-Harvey, who took out a $30,000 loan to fund the business, said she would not have gotten the investments had it not been for her educational journey in entrepreneurship.
The health care worker said she went to every startup bootcamp, entrepreneurship program, accelerator and networking event she could find over the last two years, which is where she made the connections to get her idea funded and get herself ready for “prime-time.”
“I was just flailing in the wind, but I took that time to learn and develop a good market, a good plan, a good strategy. ... Talk to other entrepreneurs, bounce my questions off of them and hear their experiences,” Williams-Harvey said. “It’s a whole new world. … I’m energized and feel very positive about where we are and from where we came from.”
