ArmHug : Portable phlebotomy station

Healthcare personnel who are certified to perform blood draws in the U.S. alone are severely understaffed with only 3.5 million eligible to perform blood draws on a daily basis.The $8B Global blood collection market is continuing to grow as mobile care today is in demand due to social distancing concerns in our city. 

Research shows that nurses and phlebotomists are adequately trained to go mobile but supply shipment delays, supply shortages during this crises has significantly made it more difficult to do their job. 

One-of-kind mobile kits can provide mobile phlebotomists with supplies packaged per patient. Antibody blood tests for the immune compromised can aid to improve vaccine and/or drug development for COVID-19 especially by sampling everyone in the population and not just one sample population. Purple Inc, is connecting e-commerce convenience and healthcare for to provide a faster solution to market especially for underserved communities at a global scale. 

The goal is to obtain a safe and fast blood draw procedure at home so the   immune compromised and senior nursing home community do not need to attend the clinic to have this procedure completed. Our pilot group will be in NYC as it is the most dense population in U.S. and most likely to see spikes in COVID-19 cases in the next coming months. 

• The population in New York is 8 million and 211K were confirmed cases in the New York State. The cases of recovery have yet to be determined.
• 618 nursing homes in NYC.
•  3 million adults in the U.S. are living with a disability and require assistance( https://www.health.ny.gov/comm...) and are not attending the clinic due to the low odds of receiving treatment. 

1) The ArmHug kit provides detailed instructions for usage so simple a trainee can be trained immediately as more staff are required for COVID-19 emergency response. 

2) If you don't use all the supplies you can store it back in the kit.

3) The current website will provide a phlebotomist database where you can locate a phlebotomist nearest you who is trained and has supplies to start the job.

ArmHug, Is a (class 1) medical device storage unit that will store packaged (phlebotomy starter kits). It holds supplies for up to 5 patient blood draws.

It also provides patient comfort; the patient can lay their arm on the top surface of the device for the blood draw procedure to start. 

• An E-commerce website has launched and pre-orders have been made. 
• A database proposal is in discussion with a technology consulting company focusing on digital health technologies and it will be available late in the fall to help build a platform on the website to allow mobile phlebotomists to get a job where they are needed the most. 
• Our vision is to provide services to serve families locally and globally who can't make it to a clinic or commute due to disabilities, worsening disease and low quality of life. We want to make sure the underserved population does receive care provided they have insurance and need treatment. More so if they are willing to participate in COVID-19 research that can help all disease stricken families involved in this crises. 

I am working directly with mobile phlebotomists and travel nurses who are constantly providing mobile care. 

Others:

• Insurance companies
• Research lab technicians drawing blood for Human clinical trials

I am calling phlebotomists and asking them what their pain points are. over 60% reported not finding the right supplies or connecting to patients in their area who are looking for their services. They travel far to find patients who need their services.

Purple Inc, is a platform to connect both needs of the phlebotomist and the patient as a seamless transaction.I have asked a group of phlebotomists to try the product for client feedback and In return I found ways to help them find jobs nearest their location. 

I have been speaking with providers who are asking patients to stay home and schedule a blood draw for labs so that they don't miss their follow-up lab. The doctor can continue to monitor the patients health (ex. drug treatment) and if they are a confirmed COVID-19 case their labs will be able to provide proof of that as well. 

Delivering one-of-kind kits for mobile phlebotomists who are working directly with confirmed cases can provide valuable data as they travel across different boroughs in New York. 

Coronoavirus IgM/IgG Rapid test kits;This dataset will also help us understand who are the most impacted and where more of the mobile phlebotomists can visit without having to ask the patient to attend the clinic/ hospital. 

At a global scale, we will know have reports on who needs the vaccine immediately after the confirmed case is made at home.

Our solution is an inexpensive portable phlebotomy station packaged with individual phlebotomy starter kits. (1 per patient) It allows the phlebotomist to perform a blood draw 50% faster using our portable phlebotomy station to perform blood collection at home.

Our competitors will not provide a portable phlebotomy station & kit as this is a medical device that can only be found on our website and it provides a solution that will provide data information that is difficult to acquire otherwise. 

The competitors: Don't provide a lid for their kits and are not user friendly (not enough storage room for supplies) and more expensive making it a difficult buy for mobile phlebotomists. Most mobile phlebotomists have to change their baskets often because of poor quality & make sure they don't drop everything while on the run making them slower on the job.  

1) https://www.ceilblue.com/colle...

2) https://www.pulmolab.com/produ...

Unless, Americans get tested we won't know who is a confirmed case or not. More Blood tests are needed for those who are confirmed case to study disease progression overtime without having them admitted into the emergency unit; knowing how the disease develops is an important aspect to making an appropriate vaccine globally.

Purple Inc, Is using the e-commerce website to supply mobile phlebotomists with kits. We will also be building the website to build mobile phlebotomist database on the website to congregate all resources specifically for mobile phlebotomists on the website. If we could help someone looking for resources or information in mobile phlebotomy and blood collection at home done safely and fast they would start sooner. 

The web is an existing technology that is being used in a new inexpensive way as the phlebotomist database will be Free to sign-up and sharing valid resources with the phlebotomy community through out the pandemic is a need we want to fill. 

It is a live website for all New Yorkers and we have even reached other cities around the U.S.

I provided a product demo here on the website below:

• https://www.purpleny.com/produ...

Activities: Purple Inc, is a start-up company that is manufacturing and packaging kits and it has been registered with the state of NY. The company is receiving mentorship with the NY small business services company.

Outputs: Purple Inc, is currently taking pre-orders for the portable phlebotomy station and phlebotomy starter kits are available in the fall Year 2020. 

Short Term Outcomes: Purple Inc, has over 50 pre-orders and a partnership opportunity with a mobile phlebotomy service ( Bruen medical partners) looking to expand in other states. The mobile phlebotomy company has been in business since 2005 and has been providing Purple Inc, guidance on scalability, funding for the business and our partnership allows phlebotomists taking tasing jobs through his platform to purchase kits at Purple Inc.

Long Term Outcomes: Purple Inc, will use the blood collection times and days data to build a better business model. Purple Inc, will build a software to aggregate all this data and provide a model so if there is another pandemic in the future we can learn how mobile care can be improved for our most vulnerable patient population. For example; how quickly we deployed resources can be measured with this data and the importance of obtaining the sample blood collection and bringing it back to the lab for analysis can be improved. If there are roadblocks we can avoid in the future this data set will help adhere to what we can do and find alternatives for better outcomes. 

ArmHug solution serves an estimated 81 phlebotomists in the U.S.The partnership we have with Bruen medical partners serves 213 phlebotomists a week. In one Year we would like to serve over 99,000 phlebotomists. 

In 5 years, We would like to expand outside of our borders and help patients in Europe who have insurance and need a blood test to receive treatment or monitor their health and have difficulty making it to the clinic and or hospital that's an average. ArmHug can help serve an additional 25 million travel nurses, nursing assistants and first aid blood drives to rural parts outside the U.S.

The goal next year is to expand from urban cities to rural parts of the country. We want to make sure we can supply mobile care in different parts of the country and what improvements need to be made. 

In the next 5 years, we are looking to partner with aid who will provide vaccinations and assign phlebotomists to help with this task as well. That way it can be deployed to patients home without having them congregate in one area to have the vaccine administered; this will be a growing problem as everyone will need assistance to have this done as quickly as possible and we want to help mitigate that wherever possible. 

Goal Year 1: Legal, The current barrier at this time is working closely with FDA consultants to file the 510K; we aim to file summer 2020.

Goal Year 5: Legal, we will need to continue to work on innovative ways to grow the product line and help cover legal costs without a large amount of debt. We are thinking about making bigger kits for those traveling and seeing a larger volume of patients per day. selling them at a 50% margin or greater so Phlebotomists will be able to carry up to 10-15 phlebotomy starter kits to aid in suburban towns. Driving is their major mode of transportation and it allows for them to carry larger kits to and from the lab. 

Goal Year 1: Financial, we are raising a 500k seed round to continue our developments as the 510k requires maintenance fees. Hire a CFO to monitor our cash flow as we begin to build traction and looking for potential partnerships with Health insurance corporations.

Goal Year 5: Financial, we will be making a 738k revenue to cover our 338k expenses for year 5 as referred on our income statement. We will be raising another $1million round to cover the costs for our R&D/operations and high-volume mass manufacturing. 

Goal Year 1: Technical, we are discussing a proposal with a software Healthcare company to help build the phlebotomist database on website. 

Goal Year 5: Technical,We are actively applying to grants to cover the consulting fees prior to launching phlebotomist database. 

Barrier 1: FDA consulting groups, will help us file the appropriate paperwork for the 510K. We are also working closely with the Small business services company to continue to work with the appropriate paperwork; and legal business certification. 

Barrier 2: Legal, we will be working with our partners to negotiate some contracts, it is private information that cannot be disclosed publicly but we are working with a team to negotiate in a professional manner with our partners and keep our partnership strong. 

Purple Inc, Is an S-Corp we are a one year old start-up who has just completed the ELabNyc accelerator and we are continuing our efforts this summer by joining Fast Trac Tech Venture program sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation. 

The portable phlebotomy station was patented by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 2016 and it was licensed to ( Hennesys Disla) in 2017. The patent has been published in 2018 and Hennesys Disla the Founder & CEO of Purple Inc, mission is to deploy this solution because Hennesys experienced the problem first hand as a certified phlebotomist and patient advocate. 

We currently have 1 full-time staff and 1 part-time staff. 

1 independent contractor with a team of 3 employees. 

We have 6 Advisory Team members  that help with different aspects of the project; business, finance, manufacturing, sales, investment, marketing, FDA consultancy. 

See team question for more details. 

Hennesys Disla, Founder & CEO; Early-stage startup experience in operations, lab/benchwork & customer service; phlebotomy certified.

Developed Idea while working at Mount Sinai school of medicine and filed the patent with Mount Sinai school of Medicine ( published in 2018). The patent was licensed to Hennesys to continue to make efforts and commercialize the idea to help make healthcare go mobile.

TBD; CFO 

Mentors: 

(1)Atisha Patel, Co-Founder and CEO of Noticare & Co-founder of Teenpreneur Inc.

(2)Stan Turyn; Senior consultant, at  VITech; Data Science, Analytics for Healthcare startups

(3)Beth Kolko, PhD, CEO & CO-Founder of Shift Labs/ Drip Assist

(4)Lisa Gavrish CNA,NCPT ;Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Academy of Medical Training Inc.18+ year healthcare experience

(5)Craig Kenesky, PhD, JD; Healthcare Startup IP, contracts and medical devices

(6)Adam Lehman: President of Synetic; Prototyping, product development & Mass manufacturing.

We are supported by 

• ELabNYC Accelerator who has provided business resources, legal advice, connections in the healthcare industry mainly in New York City. Investment funds, private capital and Angel investors. They have been resources for preperation for board meetings, executive summaries and financial analysts. 
• Small Business Services/ Kauffman foundation FAST TRAC program that began in June. 16, and they are working closely with us to continue to build the business plan and provide guidance on applying for Gov't grants for small companies who can provide aid for COVID-19 crises.

Partnered with a Mobile phlebotomy service; Bruen medical partners is our supplier and business collaborator. They are interested in having us supply their phlebotomists with supplies to get the job done. 

Clinics, hospitals and insurance companies are our key customers and subscribers as they can help providers monitor patients who are disease stricken and when providers order blood tests; we can assign a mobile phlebotomist to collect the blood at the patients home.

Purple Inc, will have mobile phlebotomists sign-up for free on the website database. Purple Inc, will use this information to match them to an appropriate patient who was referred to them by a provider. 

Mobile phlebotomist will be assigned a date, time and location nearest to them. 

Purple Inc, can even provide a kits around the city so phlebotomists can pick them up and blood collection can happen faster rather than waiting for it in the mail. 

Purple Inc, will then supply the mobile phlebotomist with a supply kit to perform phlebotomy at the patients home. Therefore, each job the phlebotomist completes Purple will pay them and provide supplies. The phlebotomists does not need to pay for the supplies, they are assigned a job and will get  get paid once the blood collection is completed. 

Purple Inc, will monitor when the blood is collected and dropped off at the lab and brought back to the lab for analysis so the provider can speak with the patient about lab results. 

We are pre-selling and collecting an ample amount of orders and we will be using the profits to continue to sell more product to achieve financial stability. We received a grant fund and we raised $100,000 in seed funding. 

I am applying to solve because there is a growing need for mobile healthcare.The Bureau of labor statistics expects employment in phlebotomy to grow at a very rapid pace 23% (Much faster than average) from 2018 to 2028

I have the product (kits) and actively hiring the team (Travel nurses and Mobile phlebotomists) to have ArmHug be a part of Healthcare at home initiative. The future of healthcare is at home and this an innovative approach with the technology we have today. We are applying with new  a new product and new approach in mind that can make the life easier for our patients and healthcare personnel. 

I would like to meet with mentors in the industry to work on sustainable product line this in the future that will make medical supply kits even more accessible and cost effective. 

We would be more than happy to collaborate and offer quite packages to anyone who would like to join our mission to provide data sooner for COVID-19. 

This includes; 

• Solve members
• MIT alumni / faculty 
• Chris Caplice
• Eva Ponce
• Yossi Sheffi
• Anyone who may be interested in providing ideas or advice on advancing supply chain distribution. 
• Medical supply manufacturing and distribution

I am a female / minority entrepreneur who is proud to be working in a male dominated industry because I want to represent groups like myself in different areas of the industry. 

The team of women I get the opportunity to work with has also provided a lot of support and growth to my well-being and business acumen. The product was built because while performing research; I found it slow and difficult to start performing blood draws. 

I had to sort supplies and make sure I was doing it all quickly in a high stress environment which leads to a lot of errors. 

I found a solution to streamline the blood draw process by providing all the materials required pre-sorted and packaged inside the portable phlebotomy station. 

The future of Planet to me means that if I can help build sustainable and accessible kit product then I can help mitigate the spread of the next pandemic.