SynerScan helps nurses simplify their rounds and makes communication with families easier.
Bryan Health, a large health care provider in Lincoln, Neb., had a problem: nurses documented hourly rounds to patients on physical sheets of paper, but this method frequently led to disorganization and backlogs at nursing stations as well as a dip in patient satisfaction.
But in early 2013 at Health Care Connect—a business plan contest supported by the Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development—Bryan Health heard numerous entrepreneurs pitch ways to fix the nurse rounding process, including one by SynerScan Technologies.
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SynerScan proposed a software solution that would digitize the entire nurse rounding process at Bryan Health. The team—Katie Hottovy, Brett Byman, Raymond Page and Ben LeDuc—came together specifically for Health Care Connect.
“We saw a lot of people thinking outside the box to try to solve the overall problem of patient satisfaction in health care,” said Byman (left), SynerScan’s president and co-founder. “It seemed like there had to be a better way, so we took one process that already existed and just made it more efficient.”
In response, Bryan Health gave SynerScan the green light.
The SynerScan team first worked to develop a close relationship with the nurses and their managers to receive direct feedback. “We talked to the nurses on a daily basis to hear their frustrations and concerns—that was a top priority,” Byman said. “A lot of people develop software, release it and say, ‘Get used to it!’ But our solution was built based on the feedback of the nurses since they are the ones using it.”
With SynerScan, nurses can use their badges to log into computers on each floor. Then the software identifies the nurse and creates a timestamp. After an hourly round is submitted, digital maps are strategically shared between nursing stations so staff can see which patients and rooms need to be visited at a glance. 
“SynerScan did a great deal of research on the different types of technologies available for hospitals and healthcare providers,” said Hottovy (right), one of SynerScan’s co-founders. “We purposefully built our solution to use existing technology and equipment, making it as web-based and mobile-friendly as possible.”
Because SynerScan utilizes existing hospital hardware, secure patient updates can be pushed out to the phones, tablets or computers of pre-approved friends and family members. “We didn’t expect to receive such an overwhelmingly positive respect on that aspect of the software,” Byman said. “Not only does it check quality of care on a consistent basis, it really provides peace of mind.”
It only took a few months for Bryan Health to see the results of SynerScan: patient satisfaction scores on standardized hospital surveys began to “shoot through the roof” and the nurses’ rounding process was visibly more efficient.
After spending three months in the inaugural class of NMotion‘s Lincoln accelerator, SynerScan found itself in a position to grow. The founders had individually contributed $100 each to get the company off the ground, while donating their time outside of regular day jobs, but the service’s success at Bryan Health resulted in further funds. SynerScan procured an initial $15,000 investment for salaries and benefits, and then raised $200,000 in angel investment earlier this month.
The four-person team now works full-time at SynerScan and hopes to expand in the near future. “We want to build a great, innovative, creative culture within our company, since all of us get along really well and we believe in our product,” Byman said. “We hope to explore how our software might help other large health care providers, as well as adapt to meet opportunities in home health and hospice care.”
Credits: Photos courtesy of SynerScan.
