Indianola-based DappINC and the Grisham-McLean Institute for Public Service & Community Engagement at the University of Mississippi have announced a partnership for the upcoming year that the two entities hope will positively impact the nation’s health care industry.
DappINC is a health care app company that is currently seeking funding and partnerships for the development of four major applications that include Blue Bird Health, Captain, Dayla and I Rise.
Grisham-McLean Director Dr. Albert Nylander was introduced to DappINC founder and CEO Tom Humbarger and advisor Rev. Duncan Hoopes through one of his former students, Indianola resident Dr. Adrian Brown of Brown & Associates Inc.
“Just listening to Tom and listening to Duncan, I could hear their passion, and I could hear their concern,” Nylander told The Enterprise-Tocsin this week. “They care about growth, and they care about making a difference for others.”
Through the partnership, DappINC will have space at Insight Park on the university’s campus, and student interns will work, on scholarship, with DappINC’s development team with a focus on the Dayla app, which aims to bring “rapid expertise exchange” that could benefit doctors and patients.
“To put it simply, Dayla affords physicians quick access to validated information,” Humbarger said. “It creates a private, supportive community enabling doctors from around the world to ask questions and engage in asynchronous dialogue with peers. Imagine a world where doctors, no matter the setting, can rapidly diagnose patients and respond better and quicker to medical emergencies, thanks to this telehealth support group for medical professionals.”
Humbarger hopes that DappINC will join the likes of other successful companies that have started and were nurtured at Insight Park, such as health care auditing firm CloudMed, which grew to be valued at over $4 billion.
Nylander said that he recognized the potential of the Dayla app in particular during his early conversations with the DappINC team.
“I really love this idea of this mobile health app that will be this rapid exchange for doctors,” Nylander said.
Over the past couple of weeks, Nylander and the DappINC team have been interviewing potential student interns from across multiple disciplines on campus, a process that has made him even more excited about the partnership.
“I don’t know all of the technical components, but I’ll tell you what, our students did,” Nylander said. “The ones that they were interviewing, who had an interest in this, they were able to talk on the same level with Tom and Duncan. We will set up a workspace for them at Insight Park. It’s a pilot program, but just seeing the initial conversations, I really see this going somewhere and making a difference. I would love to see this product come out.”
Humbarger called the partnership a “visionary step toward building a high-tech ecosystem for community engagement and economic development.”
“Thanks to Dr. Albert Nylander's leadership in spearheading this innovative pilot program, we now have the honor and privilege to follow in the footsteps of industry leaders like CloudMed, setting the stage for transformative growth and collaboration,” he said. “The caliber of top tier talent from across the nation and around the globe at Ole Miss is unprecedented. Something special is going on in Oxford.”
