Inventory tech and $3M power SxanPro health care startup

RACHEL WATSON

GRAND RAPIDS — ree years ago, Ashlea Sou rou saw an opportunity to develop a barcode scanning app that manages hospital surplus inventory, and she seized it. e result was SxanPro, a company that’s been pro table from day one.

Sou rou graduated from Western Michigan University in 2006 and started her career at Stryker Corp., a Kalamazoo-based medical device manufacturer. After a stint in new product sales, she worked in the division that remanufactures surplus single-use devices to sell to health systems at a lower cost and divert waste from land lls.

In 2014, Sou rou founded her reuse company Retegrity Solutions to resterilize and resell expired medical devices for operating rooms, catheterization labs and radiology departments.

But Sou rou ran into a problem without an easy solution when Retegrity began helping hospitals o oad extra supplies resulting from physician departures, product conversions or hospital closures.

“We would have to manually go in and write down all of the di erent products to help them sell them because ...you have to have expiration dates, lot numbers. We’d have to make sure they hadn’t been recalled, that they were in date. I had just had my second son, and so I was like, ‘I’ve got to speed this process up. I can’t be away from home for weeks,’” Sou rou said.

When she couldn’t nd a shortcut to the solution, she created her own: an app that would scan the unique device identi ers on medical supplies.

A UDI is a Food and Drug Administration-required barcode, similar to the universal product code (UPC) printed on retail store items. Among other places, UDIs are included on patients’ electronic medical records so patients can

SxanPro’s product family

 SAM (Simple Asset Manage) helps clients digitally track and manage assets.

 XCHG uses JUDI (Just the Unique Device Identi er)-captured data and SAM to transfer inventory between locations.

 MRKT is an auction and purchasing platform for supplies and instrumentation.

 The company’s newest product is LINK, which helps hospitals use asset data to quickly locate expired products or those that need to be recalled.

be noti ed if there is a product recall.

In 2019, Sou rou developed the idea for Just the Unique Device Identi er or JUDI and worked with an app developer to build a prototype. Her hospital clients started testing it and found it worked beautifully.

Supply chain leaders started thinking of more applications for her technology. So, Sou rou sold Retegrity and launched Kentwood-based SxanPro with the initial JUDI product just before the pandemic in 2020. She now holds two patents — one for scanning technology and one for pop-up recall alerts.

“( e pandemic) was a crazy time to launch anything in health care,” she said. “ e bene t was we actually were able to come alongside some hospitals that … had all of this overstock. ey had all this PPE, and they didn’t have a good way to manage it.” SxanPro technology helped them manage stock at o site warehouses.

A time-saver with data analytics functionality

Now, the JUDI app is mostly used in interventional radiology cath labs, operating rooms and anatomic pathology labs. Users can inventory products in all the procedure areas of a 600-to-800bed hospital within two days using the app, where the process might have taken weeks before JUDI existed, Sou rou said.

Still, Sou rou believes SxanPro’s big- gest value proposition is analyzing the data it collects.

“We start saying, ‘OK, well, if you know that products have expired or are going to be short-dated, you’re probably not using them. Let’s compare that to your purchasing history or your usage history. Maybe (then), we can start removing those products,’ which ultimately reduces the cost of patient care for hospitals (and) saves them money,” Sou rou said.

From baby to adolescence: SxanPro’s still growing

Grand Rapids-based Brightly handles software development for SxanPro, which employs 10 — from data analysts to supply chain experts to account managers to product owners. And the company recently closed on $3 million in private equity capital raised from Golden Vision Capital Americas to support future growth.

“ e majority of hospitals are really struggling with their margins,” said Lauren Palazzolo, vice president of GVC Americas. “So, there’s a greater need to manage and control costs. It’s solving a meaningful problem that hospitals have really struggled to get their arms around.”

SxanPro has customers around the country, including Corewell Health. And Palazzolo wants to see its tech adopted in more states.

“When you’re a small team, you have to gure out the best way to do a sale, and that is to nd someone in the executive o ce who really understands the value of the product and is able to help you sell to multiple sites within their health system,” Palazzolo said.

Sou rou said SxanPro inked a partnership with nationwide medical supply distributor Medline and landed contracts with two of the largest health systems in the country but declined to share their names for competitive reasons.

She’s optimistic the company will continue growing.

“We’ve turned a pro t every single year, which is di erent for a lot of tech startups. Everything that we’ve built has been because a customer has come to us and said, ‘Hey, if you could do this, it would solve this massive problem for us,’” she said. “Whether we create new products or we just enhance the products that we have, we will always continue to develop.”

Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com (989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86

MICHIGAN'S LARGEST EMPLOYERS CRAIN'S LIST |

employees January 2023

6 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN , Ann Arbor48109 734-764-1817;umich.edu

7 U.S. GOVERNMENT 477 Michigan Ave., Detroit48226 313-226-4910;usa.gov

8 TRINITY HEALTH MICHIGAN 20555 Victor Parkway, Livonia48152 734-343-1000;trinity-health.org, .stjoeshealth.org

9 HENRY FORD HEALTH 1 Ford Place, Detroit48202 800-436-7936;henryford.com

10 MCLAREN HEALTH CARE One McLaren Parkway, Grand Blanc48439 810-342-1100;mclaren.org

ResearchedbySonyaD.Hill:shill@crain.com

|ThislistofMichiganemployersencompassescompanieswithheadquartersinthestate.Numberoffull-timeemployeesmayincludefull-timeequivalents.Itisnotacompletelistingbutthe mostcomprehensiveavailable.Crain'sestimatesarebasedonindustryanalysesandbenchmarks,newsreportsandawiderangeofothersources.Unlessotherwisenoted,informationwasprovidedbythecompanies.NA=notavailable.NOTES: e. Crain'sestimate. 1. FromForm10-KendingDec.31,2022. 2. BeaumontHealthandSpectrumHealthmergedasanintegratedhealthsystemwiththetemporaryname,BHSHHealthonFeb.1,2022.RebrandedasCorewellHealthinOctober2022. 3. Asof July2022. 4. IncludesnumbersforSpectrumHealth,BeaumontHealthandPriorityHealth. 5. SucceededMarkSchlisselafterhewas redonJan.15.SantaOnotobegina ve-yeartermastheuniversity'spresidentonOct.13 6. Includesapproximately 16,000in-statepart-timeemployees. 7. Includesapproximately15,600in-statepart-timeemployees. 8. AsofJuly1,2021. 9. AsofJuly2021. 10. NamedpresidentandCEOonSept.8.PreviouslyservedasinterimCEOafterWrightLassiter'sdeparture inAugust. 11. EstimatefromMWPVLInternationalInc. 12. Namedinterimpresident,e ectiveNov.4.SucceedsSamuelStanleyJr.whoannouncedresignationinOctober. 13. Fall2022counts.EmployeecountsasofOct.1,2022. 14. Fall2021counts. EmployeecountsasofOct.1,2021. 15. Q42021. 16. FromFrom10-KendinginDec.31,2022. 17. AsofJanuary2022. 18. SucceededFrankSardoneasCEOinMarch2020.SardoneretiredinDecember2019. 19. FiguresareFTEcountsfromtheCenter for Educational Performance and Information.

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