Healthcare app SpiroSano came into the International Consumer Electronics Show with a plan. The startup knew that their main goal would be to get more devices oriented and hopefully make some progress in finding a partner to help create their hardware platform. What they came away with was a wealth of new contacts and the knowledge that their solution has a place in the growing health tracking market.

SprioSano’s product is described as a “personalized disease management kit” for respiratory conditions. In can be integrated with a number of devices including popular fitness tracker Fitbit.

For those of you who have been to a trade show before, most attendees are usually there to sell their own products or to attend specific meetings. CES is not like that.

“We were pleasantly surprised at how many of the right people were there and how open they were,” said Jacob Glenn, a co-founder of the company.

Unlike the usual marketing and sales onslaught, CES brings out engineers and developers who can really speak to what partnerships could occur.

Some of the contacts SpiroSano made would put the company on a whole new level, though it’s a bit early to say what the results will be. Glenn and his partner Radu Iancu also had a lucky meeting at an event for Case Western Reserve University alumni. The team had planned to meet with semiconductor manufacturers to develop a chip for the next evolution of their business, a pre-packaged microchip with SpiroSano’s platform integrated to make it easier for developers to create new devices.

However, at the CWRU event they met with industry professionals with experience in that area who let them know what to expect and that it may not go as smoothly as SpiroSano had hoped.

“It was more of an educational experience, we found out that these big companies are only looking for certain companies to partner with,” said Glenn.

Luckily, their contacts from CWRU were able to hook them up with the right people who may be able to provide what they need.

The booth alone brought in more people than Glenn or Iancu could have predicted. Not only did they have the usual crowd passing through, they also had people coming over to the Blackstone LaunchPad and think[box] booths just to check out their product. This was due both to their preparation and the work of Bob Sopko who Glenn says was like another employee working to drive traffic to their booth.

“Bob was phenomenal, he’d be having conversations with someone he knew and he’d bring us up…it was really exciting,” said Glenn.

With the promising connections SpiroSano made at CES, it’s possible they may have an earlier release than predicted. But their plan right now is to keep moving forward with the second phase of their trial to get the product perfect for the eventual public launch.

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