Startups

Excella is partnering with BEAM Diagnostics to develop a medical app

Excella has been selected as the primary tech partner to develop BEAM's medical mobile app to help prevent alcohol misuse.

Excella is working on a medical app. (Photo via @ExcellaCo on Twitter)
Arlington, Virginia-based Excella has been selected by BEAM Diagnostics as a primary tech partner to further develop its medical mobile app for taking patient vitals.

Excella is an agile tech firm helping organizations transform their ideas into tech solutions. This app will use behavioral science and advanced tech to provide clinicians with a quantitative measure of alcohol misuse severity in under four minutes, a press release states.

“The nation’s substance use epidemic presents massive challenges to every facet of our society, and we are committed to helping BEAM make the world better through tech innovation,” Margaret Archer, Excella’s director of university programs, said in a statement. “Beacon is exactly the type of solution that our mentor-and-student development teams love to build, and we are happy to be a part of the solution.”

The user-friendly app, which is supposed to be easily integrated into any clinic or hospital, is already a proof-of-concept and is currently in a clinical trial period at the Carilion Clinic in Virginia, Matt McHugh, Excella Extension Center Manager, told Technical.ly.

BEAM has secured funding for this application through grant funds, specifically from the National Institute of Health and the Center for Innovative Technology, to develop the app. These funds will be used, in part, to support the contracted partnership with Excella, Dr. Sarah Snider, BEAM’s CEO, told Technical.ly.

The Beacon app will be developed at Excella’s Extension Center, which is based on Virginia Tech’s campus, with the help of software development students under the the mentorship of Excella’s senior software engineers. Beacon is supposed to allow medical professionals the chance to detect the risk of relapse more efficiently than traditional methods, as well. Excella started analysis of that POC on August 19, and will quickly start to make changes based on BEAM’s needs as well as recommendations by Excella’s engineering team, McHugh said.

“Our partnership with Excella will help us create a user-friendly app to address the widespread challenge of substance abuse in our communities,” Snider said in a press release. “Our combined forces with the students from Excella’s Extension Center will package advanced technology that can be easily integrated into any clinic or hospital.”

Snider said the pair plan to have a commercialized product by this time next year. As BEAM continues to grow its business and explore new uses for BEACON, like potential applications for opioid misuse, Excella will be there as a technology partner to help make its goals a reality and help bring this to other hospitals and clinics.

This isn’t the first time Excella has helped a company develop an app. The company previously worked with Homestretch to create the MySpot app that helps address youth homelessness.

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