By the end of next month, somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students at more than a dozen nursing schools will be examining Tina Jones as part of their training.
Jones is a 29-year-old black junior college student with uncontrolled diabetes and asthma. But she exists only in the digital realm, created by Gainesville company Shadow Health to give nursing students practice with physical examinations so they can learn how to talk to real patients to make proper diagnoses and prescribe treatment.
The software is already being used by graduate nursing programs, and the company is releasing a version for undergraduates in January with support from Shadow Health’s staff of 30 people working out of the former American Apparel location on Southwest First Avenue in downtown Gainesville.
The technology has its roots in the University of Florida Computer and Information Science and Engineering lab of professor Ben Lok, who has been working on it since 2004 with federal funding along with a handful of other nursing schools and computer science departments.
When Lok and graduate assistant Aaron Kotranza decided to try to commercialize their technology, the UF Office of Technology Licensing introduced them to serial entrepreneur David Massias.
Massias, 41, came to Gainesville eight years ago after working on Wall Street for a firm that helped put together deals for global venture capital buyout companies such as the Blackstone Group and Bain Capital.
Massias and his wife, Michelle, who are both from Jamaica, wanted to be closer to family in South Florida, and he said he wanted to do something more meaningful. She accepted a residency in pediatric medicine here and he used his background in business and finance to get involved in Gainesville’s startup community, serving as “big brother” to dozens of new companies and co-founding and investing in several others such as Red Lambda, a computer network security company.
Kotranza, 29, serves as Shadow Health’s chief technology officer. He said the technology existed on large format screens and included head-mounted goggles for a complete virtual reality immersion, which restricted it to laboratory use.
Massias’ idea was to take the technology from the lab to the laptop so it could be used more widely. He visited medical schools and nursing schools.
“For the next six months I knocked on doors around the country and said, ‘If I did this and this and this’ and I had this concept brewing in my brain, ‘would you buy it and how much would you pay for it?’” Massias said.
Kotranza said they decided to focus on nursing because the nursing shortage made the market more open to online technology that helps save time and gives students clinical-type experiences.
Massias started recruiting a team even before he was ready to hire. He targeted Linda Nichols, who was retiring as chair of health sciences at Santa Fe College, to help develop the products.
“I said, ‘You don’t know me, but I’m going to recruit you.”
“We created Tina Jones on the back of an envelope.”
While on a plane coming back from one of his “door knocks,” he met Becca Evanhoe, who has a bachelor’s in chemistry and is getting a master’s in fine arts.
“I immediately thought ‘she’s going to write the script for our patient,’” Massias said. “I said, ‘You don’t know me today, but in six months I’m going to call you and offer you a job.’”
With the start of a team and a concept, Massias raised the first round of funding in May 2011 and dropped his other ventures to focus on Shadow Health full time. To date, he has raised about $2 million.
Massias and his wife, Michelle, who are both from Jamaica, wanted to be closer to family in South Florida, and he said he wanted to do something more meaningful. She accepted a residency in pediatric medicine here and he used his background in business and finance to get involved in Gainesville’s startup community, serving as “big brother” to dozens of new companies and co-founding and investing in several others such as Red Lambda, a computer network security company.
Kotranza, 29, serves as Shadow Health’s chief technology officer. He said the technology existed on large format screens and included head-mounted goggles for a complete virtual reality immersion, which restricted it to laboratory use.
Massias’ idea was to take the technology from the lab to the laptop so it could be used more widely. He visited medical schools and nursing schools.
“For the next six months I knocked on doors around the country and said, ‘If I did this and this and this’ and I had this concept brewing in my brain, ‘would you buy it and how much would you pay for it?’” Massias said.
Kotranza said they decided to focus on nursing because the nursing shortage made the market more open to online technology that helps save time and gives students clinical-type experiences.
Massias started recruiting a team even before he was ready to hire. He targeted Linda Nichols, who was retiring as chair of health sciences at Santa Fe College, to help develop the products.
“I said, ‘You don’t know me, but I’m going to recruit you.”
While on a plane coming back from one of his “door knocks,” he met Becca Evanhoe, who has a bachelor’s in chemistry and is getting a master’s in fine arts.
“I immediately thought ‘she’s going to write the script for our patient,’” Massias said. “I said, ‘You don’t know me today, but in six months I’m going to call you and offer you a job.’”
With the start of a team and a concept, Massias raised the first round of funding in May 2011 and dropped his other ventures to focus on Shadow Health full time. To date, he has raised about $2 million.
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