Client Tales: Apps Save Lives with Synappz Medical Apps

Have you heard that we’re working on translating Quote Roller so our international client base can take advantage of our software in their native language, too. It may surprise you to learn that the first translation we’re working on isn’t into Spanish (but that’ll be next,) Chinese, or Russian, but rather Dutch. Why, you ask? Well because, for whatever reason, after the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Canada, we have the most subscribers in the Netherlands. So our first full-site translation will cater to the 23 million or so people that speak Dutch.

This includes our Dutch friends at Synappz Medical Apps! They share our passion for using technology to make lives easier, and they take it a step (or 20) further by using technology to make it easy for you to monitor your health, even saving lives!

Jennifer Riggins: Could you please briefly introduce yourself and tell us what your business is about?

Erik van der Zijden: I’m one of the cofounders of Synappz Medical Apps. As the name suggests, we develop medical apps for mobile devices, such as the iPhone, iPad and Android. Our motto is “One app, one life. At least.” To create an app that saves a life, at least one (app and life ;-)). We started with our first app “iP Voiding Diary” that tracks your drinking and peeing behavior. That might sound funny, but it’s actual very important medical information: how much goes in, and how much goes out. We won the eHealth Startup Contest on Doctors 2.0 in Paris last year, and the Health App Award in the Netherlands. iP Voiding Diary is also the first CE-certified app in the Netherlands. In the meantime we’ve been developing medical apps for physiotherapy (3D exercises), medical drawings for doctors, an app that lets ophthalmologists share pictures of eyes between each other, an app for discovering patients with rare diseases… Anyway, there’s a lot going on.

Jen: Why did you start it? What makes it unique?

Erik: In my previous life I worked for a big pharmaceutical company and eventually saw that big isn’t always beautiful. I wanted to change people’s lives by creating something of value. A colleague of mine, Piet Nelis, shared the same vision and together we quit our jobs. Mobile was becoming a big thing, also in the medical field and since our background was in medical we dove into this adventure. When we met Dr. Erich Taubert, a urologist who had the idea of creating an app for voiding diary, the basis of Synappz was born.

Currently we have about ten to 15 people (including freelancers). We tend to believe that quality makes the difference. Not only in the products (in our case, apps) we design and develop, but also the service level. It’s difficult to find companies that work hard to retain their clients, doing their utmost to let them say ‘wow!’. We put a lot of effort in that. We have four core values that say it all: Be a Pro (act professional), a Wizard (know the latest stuff in tech and healthcare), a Do-er (walk the talk) and an Amazer (create wow-experiences). We live up to that, every day.

Jen: What do you love about being an entrepreneur?

Erik: I guess the possibility to meet so many great people. First and foremost in your team. It’s the team work that makes the dream work, it’s as simple as that. It’s extremely difficult to find equally passionate people, but once you do, you know. And of course outside, when talking to like-minded people. In this space there are so many inspiring people to talk to, to learn from. Together, the team and the people in your network, help you creating ‘something’ from ‘nothing’. That ‘something’ has value for which your customers want to pay for. How cool is that?

Jen: How do you envision success?

Erik: I once read in a book: ‘a startup is a temporary organization in search for a scalable, repeatable and profitable business model’. I like that, it’s intriguing. As a true start up (we only exist one and a half year) in a space like healthcare to be disruptive, and want to make money for growing your business… If we find that business model, that’s success. It provides us a platform to do what we like every single day. And search for that app that saves a life.

Jen: How did you hear about Quote Roller? Why did you decide to try our app?

Erik: We used another system first, but read about Quote Roller somewhere on the net and had a look at it. It drew my attention because of the way it looked first, and when I dove into it, it had those features that I was looking for. Although The Netherlands is a small country, my team works on different locations, so cloud is an absolute necessity. I like the way you can easily create professionally looking quotations. It fits our core value: “Be a Pro.”

Jen: How does Quote Roller help your business?

Erik: It helps us first to be efficient to create easily quotations and keep track of them. It also helps us with our reputation as a digital company, and doing this in a professional way. What I also like is the services around it, like your white papers on sales, and your blog.

Jen: What would you tell your friends about Quote Roller?

Erik: Give it a shot. It’s a great platform and it helps professionalizing your business.

Jen: Have you seen any winning rate increases? Any other delightful numbers?

Erik: To be honest, the success of a quotation depends on many factors, of which distribution and management of the quotations is one. But the most important one remains the content. And that still is a manual job, irrespective of the platform. But what I do know that without having calculated it precisely, we brought down our quotation process with at least 25 percent, as far as time spent is concerned. And it could go down even further is we start using all the bells and whistles of Quote Roller.

And, because I asked, here’s Erik talking about the cool contraption above: “This is an app that we developed for opthamologists (eye doctors) to be used in conjunction with a slit lamp to take pics of the inside of your eye. Normally you need to hook up a €35,000 camera to take pictures, get them from the server and send them via the hospital system to a colleague for a second opinion. Together with the Eye Hospital in Rotterdan we developed a holder for the iPhone that you can attach to the slit lamp, and an app that enables the doctor to take a pic with the iPhone camera (which is actually a very decent camera) and send it via a secure kind of ‘whatsapp’ within the app to his colleague (who could be anywhere in the world). They can create a ‘chat’ around a picture of an eye, thereby exchanging experiences. So instead of €35,000, they only pay now €75 per year. How’s that for healthcare savings! More info on www.heyeway.com.”

Do YOU want to star in our next Client Tales? Write us right away at jennifer@quoteroller.com and let the fun begin!