I didn’t start out to be an entrepreneur, but I found an opportunity with a purpose. I knew I could make a difference, but I didn’t realize how important that underlying purpose would be when navigating the challenges of a startup in the coming years.
I had been working at a software development firm for about three months when the company ran into some legal issues from a previous employee. The company was going to shut down, but I had identified an opportunity for software to help in the autism space. I negotiated the rights to the software as part of my severance, and started a company to complete the development.
At the time, autism was still an emerging condition, and the tools for autism therapy were very limited. I knew that we could build therapy processes into software, helping therapists collect data about how a child with autism responded throughout the day, recording hundreds of details that therapists traditionally recorded with pencil and graph paper.
In addition to data collection, the software would also notify the therapist when a child met criteria for mastering a skill. The therapist could always decline, but this software provided evidence to allow that child to progress at a pace correctly aligned with their data rather than waiting for someone to notice.
In the end, we were helping children with autism, and that’s what kept me going. Through the ups and downs of founding the company, I was able to remind myself that the solution we created was ultimately helping children with autism progress with proper therapy. It provided me with a sense of purpose to what we were doing.
The company grew to serve children with autism internationally. It was purchased by another autism software company, where it continues to serve its purpose in their small- and medium-sized therapy practices.
I’ve carried that send of purpose into my new company. Starting with three 10-year-old ultrasound machines, I tried to determine where they could make the most impact on healthcare. It turns out, diagnostic ultrasound imaging is used at a critical point in a patient’s care.
If you go to your doctor’s office and complain about chest pain, the first thing they’ll suggest is to order an ultrasound called an echocardiogram. That usually meant a trip to the hospital, but increasing hospital closures, high costs, and COVID fears equated to a 64% decrease in new heart disease diagnoses in 2020.
The challenge is those services aren’t available equally. Access to imaging care varies widely based on race, gender, and zip code of the patient. Rural hospital closures and lack of infrastructure create healthcare deserts, where patients find they must drive long distances, pay high prices, and face long scheduling delays just to get their basic healthcare questions answered.
New Frontier Mobile Diagnostics changes that by providing quality, affordable on-site imaging care. Now, we can provide those procedures in your doctor’s office or clinic within a week and at half the cost of a hospital. That means we can reach into rural communities and healthcare deserts, bringing diagnostic answers to patients where they need it.
By making imaging more convenient, accessible, and affordable, I believe we’ll increase the likelihood patients can get diagnostic imaging, leading to early identification of critical conditions from heart disease to cancer to problems in pregnancy. That’s why we made the mission of the company “Imaging for Everyone,” allowing us to offer life-saving services to patients regardless of location, income, race, or gender.
Founding a company isn’t easy, but it helps when you have a solid purpose driving your mission.
