CEO Corner — Experience. Dreams. Vision. Reality.
People say I’m uniquely qualified to build such a solution.
Healthcare services have been growing for several years unfortunately there is waste, fraud, abuse, and neglect. News outlet sources and various media platforms are swarming with healthcare-related issues. One of the reasons is because healthcare affects the government, small and large companies, families AND directly hinders the growth of service providers from supporting more people. Service providers are directly impacted in their service delivery because of their inefficient back office. A healthcare back office is not the same as your everyday small business. In addition, CMS has ongoing changing of regulations that traiditonal methods do not offer. Value-based care services are expensive for the average home healthcare agencyervices to a growing number of people in need with limited financial and human resources.
Optonome (op-ton-uh-mee) started from a dream of mine based on the last 20+ years of my life. I initially became passionate about transforming healthcare when my mother passed away from cancer when I was 16 years old. This greatly affected me and my family because we did not have a plan to live life without her. As I grew older, learning about the experiences of families whose members have disabilities, special needs and autism, struck a cord within me. I may not know what is is like to have a family member with special needs, but I do know what it is like to have a family member on disability and the barrel of emotions and uncertainties that come with it. One thing is for certain however — life doesn’t prepare you to take care for someone with cancer, nor does it prepare you for the birth of your child with autism, special needs, or a even traumatic accident. There is no handbook, and not nearly enough resources available for families on their daily lifelong journeys. I started Optonome because I am all in and will do whatever it takes for families like mine plan for known and unknown future healthcare needs.
Vision — Optonome is a solution to many of the existing problems with the current healthcare model. It is the ONLY Mobile, communication, training and management platform covering the entire spectrum of home and community healthcare eliminating the restraints of paper based documentation, compliance oversight, incident and emergency management, on-boarding and training of staff, billing, scheduling, and community engagement. I say this as my pitch because there is no other software that disrupts an industry while providing a single application for the entire home healthcare industry.
As a son of immigrants- both my parents originated from Ghana, West Africa, pursuing the American dream in order to build a legacy. My father’s father was a gold miner, who instilled hard work into his son then from my father to me. He continues to motivate me everyday to become the best I can be. I know he sacrificed a great deal and gave his family all that he had with the little he was given. Losing a parent from young and seeing your father work tirelessly gave me an insatiable desire to want to make both of them proud; to make a difference and really make an impact on these few years we have on this earth. And guess what? Experts in the following industries say that I’m uniquely qualified to build Optonome because of my experience in real estate, healthcare and technology. During the past 10 years I worked tirelessly achieving the following after graduating from Temple University with a bachelors in Computer Engineering:
- Real Estate- With over 10 years experience in real estate, I have grown a portfolio to over 10 properties and $2M in assets while renting to low-income residents in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While managing remotely.
- Health Care — I started a Medicaid home health agency supporting adults with autism and intellectual disabilities in their homes as well as homes I licensed (Similar to a nursing home) helping individuals with support plans (ISP) become more independent. While managing remotely.
- Technology- Using my background in engineering, I researched novel scanning and printing technologies for patent and the federal government as a primary patent examiner for the USPTO.
- Launched Optonome (then called Amity Care Cloud) mobile application in the iOS and Android app stores in 2014 for my behavioral Medicaid home health agency allowing us to go paperless, support individuals in need, stay compliant exceeding regulatory requirements and ensure consumer health and safety — no matter the location.
The transition from real estate and technology into healthcare made sense for me because I believed the administrative tasks home health providers and families face, as well as lack of affordable housing and trust between care team members can be effectively supported and managed when provided with the proper tools and technological capabilities. My goal is to give you, the reader, a detailed overview of my experience, problems I faced when applying social good components to these industries.
I will go over each industry starting with technology.
For my senior design project in 2005–2006, my team created a RFID system allowing packages for UPS or Fedex to be sorted while on a conveyer belt without user intervention and barcode scanning which I thought this was very cool, but the technology was not readily available at the time. No one knew about the internet of things, how it will become a billion dollar industry or even how to bring it to the masses. I continued on that path of researching scanning and printing systems as it always interested me since college and I thought my skill set was in the hardware space — something tangible with the assistance of software.
As a computer engineer with experience in researching and patenting novel technologies, I was equipped with skills in patent law as well as emerging technologies. The history of patent examining is fascinating. There are some notable patent examiners that you might have heard of including, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Clara Barton.
As Jordan mentioned, Primary examiners review at least 1 application a day. Reviewing an application for patent includes understanding the application including prior art, specifications and claims. Some examiners took over 10 hours to complete this process. I was able to complete this process in a fraction of the time and became a primary examiner. Being able to review technology and provide novel suggestions for improvement is a gift of mine. Why not help others in the process?
The majority of the technology companies existing today focus on profits without any social impact!
If you are an entrepreneur or software developer how can you ignore the many people with fixed incomes who cannot afford housing, people in poverty living amongst you or even the many families stressed because of their loved one in a nursing home, hospice or institution. I believe everyone deserves a comfortable home and affordable healthcare no matter their location or need. At the tender age of 26 I made the choice to pursue my dreams and develop technologies that interest me and help others. It is my hope to all my readers that you do the same. With the right experience and a dream you can make any vision a reality.
