TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) — A woman in Tallahassee is turning a medical challenge into a new opportunity to help others. It’s a problem you’ve probably run into if you’ve ever been to a doctor’s office.
“I had pain in my knees. I felt like I was falling apart. I knew in my gut something was wrong,” Allison Aubuchon shared. Over the last year, she said the pain in her joints became unbearable. “It took several months to get a diagnosis.”
She eventually received a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, but getting that answer required a lot of paperwork.
“Going to see new doctors and having to fill out the medical paperwork on the clipboard each time,” Aubuchon explained. “A few days later I was in the same building a floor up having to fill out the same information over again.”
With her condition, all that writing got to be painful.
“My handwriting looked awful, because I was physically, painfully straining to write. I just wanted to get it over with,” Aubuchon said.
All this writing led her to the question, “why is this still in 2022 something that we’re having to do? We’ve got an app for…you name it! We’re solving all these problems, yet we’re still filling out this paperwork.”
That’s where the idea for her tech startup, WellConnector, was born. It’s a digital platform that Aubuchon said will allow patients to securely share health history with providers without all the writing. She connected with Eddie Gonzalez Loumiet. He’s CEO, Ruvos, a tech firm in Tallahassee specializing in transmitting health data securely. He’s also behind the project we told you about last year known as Launch Tally.
“I am extremely excited about this project,” Gonzalez Loumiet said. “The family reached out, because they had heard about the growing tech ecosystem through Launch Tally.”
The team is using a new community of tech entrepreneurs to make WellConnector a reality. Right now, Ruvos is working with Aubuchon to roll out the initial version of the app.
“Our technology that we use a Ruvos is protecting data for citizens and residents across the United States,” Gonzalez Loumiet explained. “We have a tremendous amount of experience in that. We’re not pulling data. You, actually, are pushing the data to the provider to streamline that intake process.”
They said that data would be stored on your personal device, like a smartphone, and transmitted to the doctor through a scan. The idea is similar to the way QR codes and barcodes work.
“It’s really a textbook example of having a challenge, local business leaders coming together, create a solution and launch,” added Sue Dick, President and CEO of the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce. Dick said WellConnector is just one example of the possibilities within tech in our community.
“Local startups are thriving in our community,” Dick said. “We have tremendous resources for our local startups through Domi Station and through the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship at Florida State University.”
The team said they’re focusing on just the new patient part of the process and only rolling it out to patients and providers in the Tallahassee area to start. March 31st is their target date for a pilot program where they actually test it out in the field. One they get their feedback, they hope to start full production in July.
