Jessica Harthcock and her husband, Adam, had been working without a salary for over a year to develop an application that would match people with neurological disabilities with the facilities best suited to their needs when they just about decided to give up. Harthcock had been developing the idea since she had to navigate the overwhelming maze of options after she was paralyzed in 2004. Thanks to her family’s help, she managed to find the right facilities and studies that would eventually help her walk again (see “The High Costs of Walking,” March 2014). Knowing others were not as fortunate as she had been and didn’t know where to turn, she had persevered through college and graduate school to get the skills to build her dream business and help them. Then, in 2012, everything came to a halt.

“It all fell apart at the 11th hour,” she recalls. The challenge of launching a business reminded her of her battle to walk again. “You take two steps forward, then you take 10 steps back. And you don’t know what’s going to happen the next day or if you’re going to make it to the next milestone.”

Just as she had refused to give up when doctors told her she wouldn’t walk again, once again Harthcock soldiered on. “We actually thought about throwing in the towel and moving on and then someone reminded us what we were trying to do,” she says. “I felt very compelled to be able to build something that truly matters that can help people. That’s what kept us going.”

Over the next three years, Harthcock and company would take part in a business accelerator program, a global health challenge, a start-up challenge and a head-to-toe rebranding effort. They didn’t win any of the big competitions, but gained valuable feedback. Seeing so many startups up-close and personal helped Harthcock better appreciate what set Utilize Health apart and what made it so important. “I think a lot of companies know what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it but we started with the why, which is I think a little more unique. We’ve always known our why and every day we go back to doing this because patients need help and facilities need help finding patients.”

This spring, Harthcock’s determination paid off when she officially launched Utilize Health, the matching application she had always dreamed of. At its most basic, Utilize Health is a quick and easy Web-based matching service that asks users questions to determine which medical facilities offer the best match for their needs. The user’s location, disability, payment options and health are among the numerous factors its algorithms take into account as they whittle down the hundreds of medical facilities in the database. Right now the site is intended for people with SCI, brain injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy, but Harthcock hopes to expand it.

Harthcock’s original vision was simply to match clients, but as the service has evolved she realized many clients needed more than a list of places that would best suit them. “They were like, ‘I want to be matched but after you help me find those resources, I literally need you to help me get to those resources by calling my doctors, by helping me write an insurance appeal, by finding me transportation.’ … It was fascinating because it was outside of our scope at the time, but we took it as a cool customer development opportunity.” Those needs led to the birth of Utilize Health’s patent advocacy program.

Matt and Jill Wheeler are two of the early beneficiaries of that program. The Tennessee couple was among hundreds of people nationwide who reached out to Utilize Health following an article on Harthcock’s efforts in USA Today in November 2013. Since the Web application wasn’t ready, Harthcock and her team had matched Matt to find therapeutic options for his type 2 spinocerebellar ataxia. “Jessica was wonderful in helping open our eyes to some things we were not aware of and things most doctors don’t consider because they are outside of the box,” says Jill. Through Utilize Health’s advocacy help, the Wheelers got their insurance to cover an extensive amount of therapy which the couple say has greatly improved their lives. “I was pretty depressed after the diagnosis,” says Matt. “Utilize Health gave me a newfound life and drive.”