Davis County tech startup puts power in the hands of patients | News, Sports, Jobs

FARMINGTON — A Utah-based health care technology startup company, Udo, raised $20 million for its video-based health care application that launched Oct. 25.

The application, called Udo Care, is designed to allow patients to take charge of their health throughout all aspects of the health care system.

“There truly is nothing like Udo,” said Danny Frasure, Udo co-founder and CEO. “And one of the biggest reasons why is Udo is a patient-centric, or patient-driven platform. … It empowers not only the patient but has kept them in mind from the very beginning to the end.”

Where Udo Care fits into the health care system, according to Frasure, is that it can be stressful and challenging to navigate all patient options when individuals become sick or their family members need assistance. He designed Udo to make sure the patient comes first — not the health care companies.

Dr. S. Ryan Facer, D.D.S., another co-founder of Udo and an endodontist at Greater Endodontics, feels there is an important role the Udo Care application can serve in the broader system.

“Regardless of your creed of disciplines or your practice, your title in health care, dental care, they are all separated,” Facer said. “But there is a fundamental thing that happens, there’s a service that happens, where somebody with a certain skill set is taking care of somebody who needs care, that makes us all the same in the network.”

Frasure believes there are regulations that create barriers and place wedges between the different sectors of health care and those create distance between patients and their providers.

“Udo empowers a patient,” Frasure explained, “to capture moments along their health care journey of things that actually matter to them. Whether that’s as simple as a lab result or an x-ray or a post-visit instruction from a provider saying, ‘Hey, go and do this,’ where oftentimes you forget a lot of those things. Udo captures those moments.”

The application provides a one-of-a-kind service with the power of connection. Patients can invite health care providers, both inside and outside of their network, as well as keeping family members updated and involved in their loved one’s health care journeys.

Since they started in 2019 — no matter how much they expect to grow — the company’s main headquarters will always stay located in Davis County, according to Facer. Davis County is where their roots are, and he believes it is another way to give back.

Wesley Ryan, an analytics manager at Udo who has worked with Frasure for the past eight years, provided some insight on how the idea of UDO Care came to fruition.

“Danny’s background has been extensive in the post-acute space, mainly in home health and hospice,” he said.

Prior to Udo, Frasure managed and owned 15 health care businesses, according to Ryan.

“Throughout the last couple years, especially leading into Udo,” Ryan said, “we actually tried to solve a lot of issues in the health care space by brick-and-mortar businesses and realized that a lot of those things are not scalable to the extent that we actually wanted. … So, that’s when the idea of Udo came about, and we started heading down that road.”

Both Frasure and Facer feel that the work Udo is doing is meant to last generations, helping people for years to come, not only with their first product, but also with each product they release.

The company’s mission statement is, “To connect and empower humanity through innovation.”

Both founders say the company’s mission statement is specific to what the company does and will tie back to Udo’s spirit while still being broad enough that the company feels that they will never be able to fully accomplish it.

“How do you know when you have arrived and actually accomplished something like that?” Frasure said. “But it truly is our ethos and drives everything that we do.”

Udo’s headquarters is located at 182 N. Union Ave., Suite E200, in Station Park.

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