ObvioHealth was chosen as one of Orlando Business Journal's 2022 Fire Awards honorees, which were featured in OBJ's April 29-May 5, 2022, weekly edition.
ObvioHealth is an Orlando-based company that enables virtual clinical trials through its mobile app. Here's more from CEO Ivan Jarry:
Describe your company in three sentences or less: ObvioHealth is an end-to-end Virtual Research Organization (VRO) that delivers better data to sponsors and an easier clinical trial experience for participants. The company developed and launched the first patient-centric app, downloadable on smartphones, enabling people to participate in clinical trials from the comfort of their homes.
What was your company’s biggest accomplishment of 2021? The launch of a next-generation platform offering enhanced remote patient monitoring to the existing outcome measurement capabilities. The platform upgrade integrates an ecosystem of FDA-cleared devices to support remote monitoring through seamless connections to its patient-centric app, allowing health care providers and trial investigators to monitor up to 20 different clinical-grade vital signs without patients ever having to step foot in a clinic.
How did you get it done? We leverage advances in digital technology to tackle the inefficiencies in clinical trials. We started by designing one of the first patient-centric mobile apps downloadable on a smartphone, and purpose-built a cloud-based modular platform and app for participants to report events. We modernized each step of the trial process, from onboarding (moving to e-consent and multimedia training) to logistics (shipping and digitally tracking products and devices) to outcomes measurement and reporting.
How does your company stay innovative? We hire people who are contagiously curious, who know there is almost always a better way to do things and is eager to implement improvements.Continuous and meticulous system upgrades have enabled us to speed up deliverables. Continuous scanning of adjacent markets provides inspiration for new ideas.
What strategies have you implemented to recruit and/or retain talent in a competitive labor market? The industry’s transformation is driving a shift in the skillsets we need to design, recruit for and operate studies. We focus on agile thinkers and proactive doers, some of whom move across departments to bring lateral thinking that can bridge science and technology.
What is the biggest challenge facing your industry? The vast majority of drug and device innovations fail. The number of new drugs that have collected incontrovertible evidence of efficacy is minute. These failures are very expensive. The industry needs to find a way to fail faster so that the cost of validating successful drugs comes down significantly.
What is your company’s top goal for 2022? Exploring ways to create new digital instruments that can more effectively measure outcomes. We are collaborating with academic institutions like Children’s Hospital of Orange County to advance GI diagnostic tools by developing programs that can score stools more accurately than parents can, using clinician ratings and annotated images to train algorithms. We are also moving quickly to integrate real-world data into our trials. As we improve technologies and re-engineer processes, we will continue to pioneer easier, safer and more accurate research that can help to bring life-improving health solutions to market more rapidly and efficiently.
In the past year, what progress have you seen in the growth of Central Florida’s entrepreneurial and tech ecosystems? These past few years of growth has created a network of business leaders, innovative startups and events like Synapse Orlando that are forming the foundation of a strong tech economy. This network has encouraged increased venture capital and resources to help these businesses launch and thrive here.
What is the local technology and innovation sector’s biggest obstacle to more growth? Orlando and Central Florida are often seen as just a vacation spot, but as our region's economy continues to build off of the innovative businesses and people here, that's going to change. The biggest obstacle right now is overcoming that mindset to bring in some of the best and brightest in the tech scene.
Are you hiring now? We intend to hire an additional 40 employees in the next 6 months.
ObvioHealth
- Top executive’s name and title: Ivan Jarry, CEO
- Year founded: 2017
- No. of employees in Central Florida: 11
- No. of employees companywide: 82
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