Nomi Health: rebuilding the supply chain and reshaping the way governments respond to a crisis

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, our economy and way of life have been brought to a standstill. As schools, restaurants, retailers and factories shuttered indefinitely throughout the country in early March, it quickly became clear that no state or industry would go unaffected.

The pandemic created a rapidly evolving crisis for each state and one industry in particular: healthcare.

Our State, Utah, was desperate for supplies, there was no leadership coming from the Federal government and the few approved vendors in the state of Utah didn’t have enough to offer. Testing was almost non-existent in Utah and people were trying desperately to get tested.

While we all watched our existing healthcare systems fail us in real-time, it also became clear that this crisis was too big for any one company or government to tackle alone. When it comes to governing, knowing what you don’t know and knowing when you need help is essential.

Not only did states need supplies, they also needed a single contractor to manage the response and coordinate logistics, rather than paying and managing many individual companies. Seeing that need — and knowing our team at Nomi Health had the unique ability, resources and expertise necessary to help — we stepped up.

On March 12, more than 100 CEOs from Silicon Slopes, a non-profit organization that empowers Utah’s start-up and tech community, joined a phone call with state and local officials to discuss the State’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mark, our co-founder and CEO, also emailed contacts around the same time with a call to action around testing, pointing out the various elements that needed to come together for an effective testing operation.

Combining the group’s experience in building healthcare companies, managing complex supply chains, providing certified clinical expertise and testing and more, we came together with state and local officials and found ways to coordinate an emergency response.

Not only was it the right thing to do, but based on our experience we knew that these unprecedented circumstances demanded an unprecedented approach.

Our origins

Nomi Health was originally founded on the idea of lowering barriers to healthcare access by creating more direct access to reduce its high cost, so it made sense for us to apply the same approach to this undertaking.

Creating a successful testing operation is a complex undertaking and involves everything from helping source critical supplies like personal protection equipment (PPE) and FDA-authorized tests, to supplying technology, to clinical and volunteer support. By stepping in as the general contractor, Nomi coordinates healthcare, technology, supply chain and many other things to meet the testing needs of any state.

While this started as a completely volunteer effort for our local area, it quickly became clear that the State needed a massive coordinated testing response. During those initial weeks we learned three things:

1. the initiative well exceeded any semblance of our initial vision in cost, time and scale;
2. one single organization was needed to pull everything together, coordinate and hold partners accountable; and
3. the State of Utah wanted a single contractor to manage the response, rather than paying and managing dozens of individual companies.

Given our track record, Utah state officials approached the companies involved in the initial coalition to formalize the partnership under “TestUtah.” The State extended commercial terms so each company could continue to support and provide the necessary services to keep Utah’s COVID-19 test expansion moving.

We are proud of the fact that our volunteer efforts turned into something bigger. Our response has been unconventional, but it has worked and been widely effective.

What we do

Nomi serves as the general contractor for TestUtah, TestIowa and TestNebraska, ensuring every vendor is paid and everything functions as needed. As a general contractor, we signed multi-million dollar contracts with the states of Utah, Nebraska and Iowa with the majority of dollars flowing to support the partner organizations. Only a percentage of that dollar figure goes to Nomi Health. Nomi is responsible for supplying and delivering FDA-authorized tests, ISO 270001, FedRAMP, HITRUST and HIPAA-compliant technology, and testing site materials for these programs.

Nomi’s operations are collaborations between the public and private sectors, including state Departments of Health, the National Guard, HCA’s MountainStar Health, Co-Diagnostics. Qualtrics and Domo are first-in-class technology companies that have helped combine clinical rigor with a seamless user experience. Every day 300–400 people across our partners are mobilized, including dozens on Nomi’s payroll.

All testing in Iowa, Nebraska and Utah is conducted with FDA-authorized tests and assessed at a CLIA and CAP certified lab. Without sacrificing quality, we rebuilt the supply chain and reshaped the way governments respond to a crisis in a matter of weeks.

Our quality & standards

While our company may be new, the people we are working with aren’t. We have harnessed the combined clinical expertise of MountainStar Health, Co-Diagnostics, ATL Technologies and SafeLane from day one, and Cortex brings a workforce of over 800 RNs to the table every day. Qualtrics and Domo are first in class technology companies and their experience speaks for itself. Dave Elkington is a master of systems and Ryan Hyde and his team have transformed how labs work.

The Co-Diagnostics test is FDA-authorized and continues to demonstrate exemplary sensitivity and specificity (the benchmarks for accuracy) in multiple, independent evaluations of its clinical performance. Four studies can be found here.

Our team brings decades of experience in healthcare, innovation and technology. Nomi’s co-Founder and COO Josh Walker was the COO of Optum Health and Imagine Health and brings more than 18 years of healthcare and first-hand experience in building and scaling healthcare organizations in international and domestic healthcare markets. Nomi’s co-Founder and CEO Mark Newman created HireVue, the largest video assessment provider in the world. Our CTO and co-founder Boe Hartman, former partner and Chief Digital Officer of Goldman Saks has decades of experience building and scaling innovative technology products.

Together we have combined cutting-edge technology and state of the art laboratory equipment with FDA-approved testing kits and PPE to create an integrated “turn-key” solution to COVID-19 testing.

Where we operate

We’ve made tremendous progress since we launched TestUtah on April 2 and have worked tirelessly to move fast, cut costs and deliver when others couldn’t.

We were approached by state officials in Iowa and Nebraska to expand testing their efforts and have worked with local and state officials to bring robust, effective testing to their states.

In the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis, Nomi Testing has already:

● powered over 800,000 online assessments;

● supplied more than 600,000 FDA-authorized tests ahead of schedule;

● launched three websites with leading software companies;

● set up and validated four CLIA-certified labs; and

● helped mobilize 30 testing sites across three states.

● Provider a comprehensive testing and technology solutions available to 8.3MM people

Delivering when others couldn’t

Over the last three months we’ve moved fast, come in well under budget and are providing testing at one-third of the costs of others.

In the first 60 days of TestUtah’s operations, the program has saved the State $2.6 million, coming in roughly 30% under budget per our contract, and we expect to save the State another $4 million by July. Not to mention the additional savings that has come from choosing our lower cost solution over others.

States needed immediate access to scarce resources, high-quality testing equipment and an efficient process to get it right. So far we have delivered on all three in every state we’ve worked in.

This effort has been swift, and while it may not have been without the learning curve, it has saved lives, flattened the curve and is setting the standard for how governments effectively respond to a crisis.

We are honored to serve at the service of these states and look forward to continuing our work with our partners in the public and private sectors to get Americans across this country tested and back to living their best lives.