By Joel Wittnebel/Active Senior’s Digest
A new app can make sure you never miss a doctors appointment or post-care treatment again, and it’s all thanks to a rather nasty broken bone.
When a simple, yet unfortunate, set of circumstances led to Zack Fisch almost losing his leg, he decided to do something about it.
It was a game of ultimate frisbee, and Fisch, jumping to catch the disc against a much taller opponent, came down awkwardly, breaking both bones in his leg. He was rushed to the hospital where he was treated and a cast was put on. It was only after he was released that things started to go wrong as the nurse quickly explained the after-care processes for taking care of his leg after the injury.
“I was stressed, I was tired, I was just coming off of morphine, I didn’t really take any of that in,” he says.
The complications and infections that followed nearly led Fisch to having his leg amputated; thankfully, it didn’t come to that.
“This was a needless situation, a complication developed that didn’t have to develop,” he says. “It makes them (patients) feel as though sometimes they’re just thrown out into the wilderness, and they needlessly fall through the cracks, which impacts the quality of care patients receive, it impacts unnecessary re-visits, it impacts unnecessary readmissions, and this is a big problem.”
Now, Fisch has started an app that is looking to help those patients and make sure what happened to him doesn’t happen again.
“It happens every single day to people across the board. So we’re building something that will not only catch patients who fall through the cracks, but propel them toward a successful recovery journey,” he says.
That something is Dash MD, an app that is set to manage the way patients manage their care after they leave the hospital and the eyes of the professionals.
The app is a one-stop shop for everything a patient needs for their aftercare and can be tweaked to their individual needs with medication schedules, resources for community care and slotting doctor visits. Hospitals can also use the app in sync with their patients to ensure they are getting the proper care when they leave the building. It can also be used by caregivers to manage the care of children or senior citizens who may not be able to use the app themselves.
“It’s really a Swiss army knife of tools that help patients mange their recovery,” Fisch says.
Available on IOS and Android devices, the app has gone live in its first hospital in Markham and the start-up is looking to expand to 16 new hospitals in Ontario and across the country in the coming year.
The app was also recently awarded $25,000 from winning the GTA-based Spark Centre’s Ignite Competition, which helps start-ups and entrepreneurs take their business ideas to the next level with funding and workspace.
“It’s a huge honour,” Fisch says. “It’s really meaningful for me, the team, and we’re just really incredibly proud that the faith has been put in us to execute.”
The Ignite Competition also awards recipients with entry into the Spark Centre’s Thrive Accelerator program to help grow their business as well as free space in the their head office at The Loft in downtown Oshawa.
