Johnson Cornell Tech MBA Alumni Startups Tackle COVID-19 Challenges
Whether in the hospital or at home, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced challenges that can only be resolved with innovation and determination. In this special feature, four Johnson Cornell Tech MBA alumni discuss how the companies they have launched introduce solutions to obstacles during the pandemic.
Enroute Facilitates Patient Care
Enroute Co-founders, Mike Kosnik, CEO, and Samson Schirmer, CPO
Johnson Cornell Tech MBA alumni Mike Kosnik and Samson Schirmer created Enroute. As medical professionals around the world face the uncharted waters of a global health crisis, Enroute has found a way to make hospitals with simultaneously over-capacity and under-resourced hallways easier to navigate. This startup has gained momentum as they are helping patients and doctors to optimize patient flows in hospitals overrun by COVID-19 cases. Enroute is a platform that provides the tools and intelligence necessary to enable seamless patient transportation throughout a hospital.
How has the pandemic affected your startup and what kind of impact do you foresee the pandemic will have on your company in the future?
The pandemic has obviously made it difficult for our team to get inside hospitals to conduct user research and speak with potential buyers. While this has been frustrating, we’ve still been able to make great connections in the space through the Cornell network and from the publicity we received by winning the 2020 Cornell Tech Startup Awards. We’ve also been able to use this time to improve our product design and go to market, and we believe that once the pandemic subsides we’ll be in a great position to grow our business. COVID-19 has also unfortunately highlighted some of the operational inefficiencies inside of hospitals. Many institutions struggled to handle the influx of patients. Emerging from the pandemic, these hospitals will undoubtedly be aware of the problems they experienced and focus on finding solutions that can remedy some of these issues in the future. Our product will not only help them operate more efficiently, but it will help them to cut down and save on wasted costs. The pandemic is highlighting the need for digitization inside hospitals, and we are creating a product to assist in this effort.
Can you tell me more about your team?
We have a strong mix of technology, design, and business minded individuals, and we believe this unique combination will help us succeed in the future.
What are the biggest challenges your startup is facing?
Selling to hospitals, or any large organization for that matter, can be challenging. It requires getting buy-in throughout the organization, and the sales cycle often lasts half a year or more. Hospitals also deal with large amounts of highly confidential patient data, and it is a necessity that we ensure data is secure on our platform when working with customers. Finally, we need to be cognizant of integrations. Most hospitals require that any software run at a hospital integrates into their EMR system, so we need to ensure that our software is compatible with any of the major players.
Any additional background or information you’d like to share?
Our team came together at a Hackathon, run by Mindstate and hosted at a hospital, in Israel earlier this year. The second largest hospital in Israel was having issues with their patient transportation, and we came up with Enroute to tackle the problem. Our team ended up winning the Hackathon, and shortly thereafter we began working on our product. An additional interesting fact: we have a part-time member of our team who was actually lost in a hospital a number of years ago while being transported. He was forgotten midway through his transport by the staff, and he ended up having to wait for two hours until someone picked him up.
See the full article by Clear Admit.