12 Buffalo Business Spring 2022
But, he says, a lot of entre-
preneurs are launching start-
ups on the supplier side of health
care—the kind like Somogyi's that
deliver new vaccines, drugs, medi-
cal devices and soware solutions.
One of the newest startups in
the health care IT space is Opollo
Technologies LLC, winner of the
2021 Panasci Technology Entrepreneurship Competition.
Founded by Ryan Young, MD '20, MBA '21, Opollo™ is a
cloud-based artificial intelligence platform that learns from
a wide range of health care data to provide more accurate
surgery duration forecasts than existing methods.
Opollo Technologies also empowers its customers to
monetize their efficiency by selling the resulting open time
slots to insurance companies on the Opollo Exchange, a
marketplace where medical services are bought and sold.
"Using my UB education, I've been able to merge seem-
ingly different concepts such as quantitative finance, artificial
intelligence and medicine together to solve a real-world prob-
lem and improve the health care system for everyone," says
Young. "The complexities of medicine can unexpectedly alter
the time a surgery may take, which can be frustrating for
staff and patients, and costly for health care facilities. Opollo
reduces costs by preventing some of the overestimates, while
on the revenue generation side it opens up additional time
slots, increasing revenue and
patient access to care."
Danielle Blount, MBA '16,
serves as project manager for
Launch NY, a nonprofit venture
development organization head-
quartered in Buffalo. In addi-
tion, she coordinates the ECO
Incubator program, which focuses
on clean-tech companies, giving
her a firsthand look at how data
is revolutionizing health care
Blount
Young Photo Illustration: Douglas Levere
"Every day, we're unlocking data that wasn't previously available—and making that data
understandable to people without medical degrees is where I can see entrepreneurs
playing a big part in the health care field moving forward."
— Danielle Blount, MBA '16
