ArmHug

My current role as the founder of Purple Inc is to bring blood collection kits to the market and make it easier and faster to get patient blood collected by a mobile phlebotomist for diagnostic/screening purposes at a patient's home.

In 2016, I was a researcher and trained phlebotomist at Mount Sinai Hospital. Phlebotomy is the act of performing blood draws and I struggled preparing for it to avoid long patient lines and patient discomfort.

Prior to my experience in the hospital, I was working in operations at an event startup organizing the weekend events, food orders, speaking to high level executives meanwhile managing a 6 person team. 

I worked at a biotech start-up assisting marketing and managing newsletters and high-volume emails. I exited my corporate job at SERMO as a Project manager to pursue this new venture and solve this problem I can't stop thinking about. 

Problem: Long lines of disease stricken patients waiting for blood collection at the clinic or hospital. Solution: ArmHug; providing blood collection kits to mobile phlebotomists to perform blood draws at the patients home.

ArmHug was created to help the increasing demand for healthcare at the comfort of your home. Cancer patients need to follow-up blood collection or newly diagnosed patients will need blood collection for proper treatment diagnostics and monitoring.  

This kit will help get the blood to the labs sooner and increase the revenue to the clinics; we no longer need to have patient wait at the clinic or worry about cancelled appointments as all appointments in the future will be scheduled at the patient's home. 

Imagine scheduling a blood draw and receiving a phone alert that the phlebotomist is on her way. Our goal is to build a service to bring healthcare safely at home. 

The specific problem I am working to solve is reducing the wait time for a blood draw at the clinic for diagnostic screening purposes. Patients miss appointments due to long commutes and or long wait times for required blood draws.  

According to National Center for Biotechnology Information the phlebotomy and nursing roles are a critical part of healthcare and make up the largest section of the health profession and the estimated size of target population: domestic: 30 million & globally: 90 million. 

The global blood collection market was valued at $8.50 Billion by 2018 and is projected to register growth at a CAGR of 6.6% over the forecast period. 

ArmHug; is a connivence kit and it packages 5 phlebotomy starter kits to make sure the phlebotomist is prepared to begin blood collection. It's an organizer that you can carry and take inside the patient's home and bring to the lab. 

It's is lightweight, easy to use and easy to refill, easy to clean. There is only one way to complete a blood draw and we created the best kit on the market to start and finish one blood draw. 

ArmHug provides healthcare personnel with all the materials to do their job well. It gives them the confidence to start their job without worrying about what supplies are in there, armHug will be stocked as often as the phlebotomist need it. 

We will create a personal schedule with the phlebotomist so we can deliver the supplies for her/him to use before their next supply runs out. 

Our project serves hardworking nurses and mobile phlebotomists. ArmHug allows the healthcare personnel to focus more closely on the patient as well as focus on obtaining more blood draws from patients per hour/each day. 

I have had healthcare personnel surveys and I have had them request for specific things we can do to help. We are also surveying clinics to ask patients how they feel about their experience in the waiting room. 

ArmHug, is addressing the need to be prepared to perform procedures and be prepared for the patient. It's a routine blood draw and the supplies are routine and the professional is taken care of because we provide high-quality products in an effective manner so there is more focus is on the patient. 

ArmHug will have everything they need without a nurse digging to find supplies on multiple supplier sites with a reasonable price. ArmHug has an armrest to improve the patient comfort level. ArmHug is reusable and lightweight so they can take it mobile. 

I was a clinical research coordinator and I had this problem at the clinic. 

How can I help patients by giving them a less wait -time? The longer the wait-time the more cancelled appointments. Patients were tired, disease stricken and they needed the blood draw so they can get proper treatment. 

We were a 5 person research team and we were short staffed and I wanted to build something that could guarantee a more organized and professional appearance when seeing my patients for their blood draw which took about 15-20 minutes of their time.  

Some patients had walkers or wheelchairs but with ArmHug I could go to the patient instead of trying to wheel them inside a room which took a lot of effort and time. 

ArmHug, reduces the time for their blood collection and it leads to a better work experience for the phlebotomist or nurse. As well as a happy patient without waiting 45 -61 minutes in a full patient room every morning. 

I cared about the patients and I wanted them to have a good experience with us because they would return and continue to seek their treatment to feel better. Most of the patients I spoke with were trying to find accessible treatment and they needed routine blood draws to make sure the drug was having positive effects. 

I felt a responsibility to make sure they all got their blood drawn in a timely manner but due to the high-volume of disease stricken patients each day it was making it harder for them to come to appointments and be seen by there specialists. They rescheduled most of their appointments or ignored them because it wasn't accessible.

I felt like I failed when I could not meet the capacity of patients each day, the kit would help me train new trainees and use it to prepare phlebotomists rather than counting supplies they can count on ArmHug to have everything packaged inside ready to use. 

I am a certified phlebotomist and my background in research and project management has prepared my for this role. 

I have experience working directly with patient care and blood collection supplies, procedures and protocols. I am also working with partners who are in need of supplying phlebotomists in this growing demand of healthcare blood collections at home. 

We have ArmHug pre-orders and we are looking to fill them in the next 3-6 months. 

Changing the name of the company, was a difficult decision and the team and myself realized there is another company with the same name in another state and we agreed that it would be best to change it prior to product launch.

At first, I was hesitant as I had used the name for 3 years. I really think it came down to trusting my team and listening to them because they are more experienced at this than I am and they understand how important this would be. I really couldn't think of a better group of advisors. 

We used this opportunity to grow, we became better at communicating.    We even had meetings to ask one another on how we were doing, mental health check-ins. 

We wanted to make sure we could discuss issues at meetings no matter how small. 

I worked with a group at a hackathon and I was appointed as the business lead because it was an idea I pitched that gathered interest. 

I found myself in a predicament whether to change the company idea or allow to present it as the group suggested it. We were tight on time and we didn't complete the task that day. I suggested as a group to write down pro's and con's on the company idea and direction so far. 

As a group we chose to go with the idea we all had but didn't even realize it before. To me this was a successful pitch because we all felt in unison about it, It was successful because we enjoyed presenting it together.  We continue to keep in touch today.