Splore

Splore takes social networking, crowd-sourcing, and knowledge sharing to a whole new level. The web revolution created an explosion of websites. And that information overload led to a greater dependence on search engines, question and answer sites, and discussion forums. Today, the focus is turning to individuals, and empowering each of us to connect with the right people and the right information, at just the right time - leveraging location services where appropriate. Splore helps people pursue the things that are most important in life - their passions, causes, hobbies...by helping to leverage the increasing wealth of data and knowledge available around the world.

After intensive user and market testing with a generic beta product release, we have just recently "pivoted" towards an initial focus on peer to peer healthcare.  We are actively developing (but have not yet released) a custom instance of Splore targeting this industry.

Chronic illness affects nearly half the population of the United States.  While physicians provide critical diagnosis and treatment options for their patients, these individuals and their loved ones must deal with traumatic lifestyle changes every day, often for the rest of their lives.  Not only do these conditions result in 7 out of every 10 deaths in the world, and many billions of dollars in medical costs, but they also leave hundreds of millions of isolated and unhappy people in their wake.

Splore was founded by physicians and technology professionals.  Its immediate goal is the development of social/mobile software solutions to empower patients to create meaningful peer-to-peer connections with other patients, healthcare providers, and an entire wellness ecosystem looking to improve the lives of those suffering from chronic disease.

Shawn Ivey, founder and CEO, is a 20 year veteran of the software industry having been involved in numerous startups during his career.  A software engineer by education, Shawn has gained experience in commercial software development, strategic and technical consulting, business development and sales, and executive management.  His industry experience includes early innovations in the full-text search and information management segments, knowledge and content management, collaboration, open source and software as a service.  His resume includes experience with IBM, Lexis Nexis, Open Market, NextPage, and Autonomy.

Rounding out the executive team:

Larry Padgett, M.D., Chairman & Co-Founder.  Entrepreneur and respected orthopedic surgeon, team physician Atlanta Braves.

Karl Sweeney, CFO.  Seasoned business executive; Marriott CFO, Atlantic Blue CFO, Deloitte.

Robert Cigan, Engineering Director.  Founder 3Lancers (Ruby on Rails Consulting), Railsformers, Brno University of Technology.

Gary Woods, Advisor.  Seasoned technology entrepreneur, sales & marketing; co-founder LifeLock, Business Development Insight, MicroAge.

Splore was designed to serve peer-to-peer collaboration regardless of the target market (healthcare, humanitarian aid, families, hobbies, etc.).  Our initial focus on chronic healthcare provides a business model for long-term financial success and continued growth, but also serves to enable expansion into other markets over time.  Monetization is based on 3 primary channels:

1. End user (patient/consumer) – free.  The focus is viral user growth, which then serves to enable a broader freemium model with subscription-based consumer services.
2. Experts (physicians) – $50/month subscription fee.  Allow physicians to build targeted marketing to their patients and prospects, as well as build reputation through engagement in this new peer-to-peer medium.
3. Organizations (health groups) – white label platform license fees, $50k-$1M+.  Pharma companies, medical vendors, etc., sponsor Splore implementations for targeted communities (e.g., Down Syndrome Foundation) and events (e.g., ISSCR annual conference).

Multiple white label deployments of Splore are currently under development in conjunction with strategic industry partners.  One example demo site can be viewed at http://aana.splore.com.

Splore is uniquely positioned to provide a safe, social & mobile peer-to-peer experience focused less about searching for information or getting answers to discrete questions, and instead centered on creating long-term personal relationships among patients, doctors and medical professionals with the goal of improving overall personal happiness and well being.  Privacy is protected by default within Splore, and ensures a safe environment to interact with people you have likely never met before.  Questions come and go, medical information is often slow to change, but relationships last a lifetime.  And enabling these through mobile platforms facilitates frequent, daily engagement.