HealthSnap Solutions Leverages Miami’s Ecosystem to Build Its Business
A Miami tech startup — HealthSnap Solutions — is marketing an innovative product to healthcare providers that could be a powerful tool for helping patients improve their lifestyles and prevent chronic diseases nationwide.
Founded in Miami by five entrepreneurs in 2015, the company drew on elements of the area’s dynamic startup ecosystem to support its development. These included the diverse scientific, technological and research facilities at the University of Miami, the university’s Hemispheric Innovation and Technology Initiative (HIT) and Converge Miami’s Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC Miami), which provides office space in a creative entrepreneurial community with access to advice on intellectual property and raising capital.
The Miami-Dade Beacon Council was also a key factor. “We found out about the Council’s Life Sciences & Healthcare Committee, which helped us understand the ecosystem in Miami and play a role in it,” said Samson Magid, a co-founder of HealthSnap and its Director of Business Development. “There are tremendous opportunities for healthcare in Miami and the council did a tremendous job helping us in networking and navigating the new territory,” said Samson, who earned undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Miami in nutrition and human performance. HealthSnap, whose goal is to effectively bridge the gap between lifestyle and medicine, developed its proprietary Electronic Lifestyle Record™ (ELR) so that healthcare providers can easily collect health and lifestyle data with an online questionnaire during an office visit.
The company, funded by its five co-founders/owners, has propriety software that generates a personalized report with diet and exercise information, plus lifestyle recommendations. The patient discusses the report during the same office visit, and the provider can then track the patient’s progress.
The ELR technology was invented by Wesley Smith, Ph.D., a co-founder of HealthSnap and its Chief Scientific Officer. Smith also is chair of the undergraduate physiology program and director of the graduate program in nutrition and human performance at the University of Miami. The other co-founders worked to help develop and launch the product. Healthcare providers pay a fee to use ELR.
“We now have about 100 physicians using ELR after a year on the market, and we’re growing by 15–20 percent per month,” said Yenvy Truong, the CEO and a co-founder who holds a University of Miami degree in biomedical engineering,
“We’re here because the technology came out of UM, and we want to stay very close to the university,” Truong continued. “We’re very motivated to be part of the developing tech industry here. And at CIC Miami, we have opportunities to meet potential partners, and there’s always something going on that we can learn from.”
