A health care technology startup with major Tampa Bay ties has seen a huge spike in interest as coronavirus turns the health care industry on its head. And now it has now grabbed the attention of the Charles Barkley Foundation.
SynsorMed, which is an online platform that allows patients to measure medical data from their own homes, is working with the Charles Barkley Foundation (founded by the basketball Hall of Fame player) to combat health disparities in the Black community, in particular during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Barkley is a partner with Alabama Future Funds, which has invested in SynsorMed. SynsorMed has offices in Tampa, Atlanta and is headquartered in Birmingham. It is a member of local innovation hub Embarc Collective and was also in the inaugural class of the Tampa Bay Wave's TechDiversity cohort.
SynsorMed and the Charles Barkley Foundation came together to create the Save Our Selves Council, made up of roughly 20 Black technologists, health care professionals and policy makers concerned about the health of Black Americans.
"Our goal is to create the largest set of data with Black Americans during the pandemic," SynsorMed Co-founder Theo Harvey said, acknowledging the data will outlast the pandemic. "Health care disparities for Black Americans have been around for hundreds of years. Our goal is to do something for the current crisis but it can go beyond that."
The initiative is two-fold: a website launched on Juneteenth for Black Americans to take a mobile online survey detailing their health data and that data will be used to better deliver resources to the Black community and connect them to doctors remotely if needed.
"The more individuals that submit (data), the more we can help over time," Harvey said. "Things with PPE, self-isolation, housing things like maybe even grants for employment issues. It's not just taking a survey but it's creating an understanding of what is needed."
The eventual goal is to have the data and then present to influential movers and policy makers.
"Obviously due to some of the social injustices that have taken place, awareness has definitely come to the forefront," Harvey said. "This is an effort aligned with those goals: so figuring out how to assist Black Americans not just from a health care perspective, but an economic and social justice perspective as well."
