Startup Roundup: Accreditrust, Fusar and Practice Unite
Accreditrust: Warren-based startup Accreditrust demonstrated its TrueCred eTranscript Processor — a standards-based, interoperable and independently verifiable solution to address the needs of the extended transcript market — at the 2015 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, at the end of October. The TruCred eTranscript Processor product enables students to easily submit credentials and competencies to employers in a secure and easy way, said President and CEO Eric Korb.
Accreditrust also showcased its technology in October at the Employment Tech Explosion portion of this year’s Close IT Summit, in Washington, D.C., where it was selected as a top innovative company in the areas of hiring, training and competency-based credentialing. The Employment Tech Explosion was co-hosted by Innovate+Educate (Santa Fe, N.M.) and GSV Advisors (Chicago, Ill.).
The company’s software uses cryptography to ensure that digital credentials are tamper-proof. Hiring managers can use the system to independently verify credentials, gaining peace of mind, as they can be sure they are making decisions based upon verified information.
“This is an exciting time for employment technology, as there are so many new opportunities to impact how people represent their skills, credentials and certifications,” said Korb. “As education credentials such as diplomas, degrees and professional certifications have been shifting from paper to digital certificates (PDFs) to online profiles in recent years, the methods of verifying them haven’t kept up.” Korb continued, “This is a fundamental part of the puzzle that accompanies innovation.”
“Internet standards for credential security and processing have not kept pace with the way hiring managers use the Internet today to verify a candidate’s published capabilities. This is certainly true in the digital credentials space,” he said.
In April of this year, Accreditrust was named by the educational technology website gettingsmart.com as a one of the top 20 “High Impact EdTech Enterprises” (and one the top 10 startups) out of a total of 300 presenting companies. And the company has received a strategic investment from Verisys.
Fusar: Fusar (Jersey City), a TechLaunch company, reached its latest fundraising goal on Indiegogo in just one day. The company recently pivoted from making a smart motorcycle helmet to making “Mohawk,” an accessory that can be added to helmets for any action sport.
The firm explained in an email: “We’ve had a great response to our campaign and we have to thank each and every one of you who backed us and shared our campaign page with your families and friends. We were able to catch the eye of a powersports distributor here in the U.S. that placed a sizeable order, enabling us to crush our $100K funding goal. We want to keep up the momentum, so please keep spreading the word so that we can get Mohawk into the hands of enthusiasts the world over.”
Fusar is preselling Mohawk, which can convert any action sports helmet into a smart helmet. As Fusar said in its Indigogo campaign, “Mohawk is an all-in-one Swiss Army knife of smart helmet technology. It’s equipped with an accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS. It’s the most advanced helmet-mounted accessory device ever built.”
The Mohawk has a communication device, navigation unit, black box and emergency response system all wrapped into one, the company says. The unit sits on top of a helmet, hence the name “Mohawk.” Users can capture high-resolution photos and high-definition videos with the press of a button on a wrist or handlebar-mounted remote. The media syncs directly with a smart phone for easy viewing and sharing.
“If something really cool happens and you weren’t recording, press two buttons to initiate a hotshot,” the company advises. That captures the last 15 seconds of action and pushes it into social media live in real-time. A cloud-based push-to-talk communications system lets up to 12 friends talk to each other over any distance using any Bluetooth headset. The startup says this technology is a “world first.”
The unit can also detect if someone has been in a collision, with the black box locking down the last two minutes of audio, video and telemetry information, giving a record of what happened just before the collision. It also sends text messaging and email alerts to emergency contacts.
Practice Unite: Practice Unite (Newark), partnering with Futura Mobility (Fort Washington, Pa.), a specialist IT services company, says it is seeing clear evidence of adoption of its mobile communications solution for hospitals and practitioners. Inspira Health Network has unveiled the results of its Quiet Hospital initiative, demonstrating a 26 percent increase in its HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores for quietness at its Vineland hospital.
Inspira Hospital Network has three medical centers and more than 60 locations in New Jersey. It partnered with Practice Unite, Futura Mobility and Futura’s implementation arm, Pursuit Health Advisors, to improve communications and speed up workflows as part of its Quiet Hospital program. Inspira’s HCAHPS scores had previously been impacted in part by a high number of overhead pages. By implementing Practice Unite’s communications solution, Inspira was able to eliminate this disturbance to patients.
The solution was first deployed at Inspira’s Vineland location. Overhead pages were immediately cut from 150 a day to only three. This solution was subsequently deployed at its other locations, whose initial scores are also trending upwards, Practice Unite said in a release.
