Health outcomes in the Mississippi Delta consistently rank among the lowest in the nation.
Compounding the problems caused by disease are often technological deficiencies and access to quality care due to proximity to specialists and the threat of facility closures closer to home.
For Indianola native Tom Humbarger, who has spent a good deal of time in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, there’s no place more ideal to try and fix some of health care’s biggest challenges than the Delta.
“Especially from the startup point of view, I can’t think of a better place for incubators to be than in Mississippi,” Humbarger told The Enterprise-Tocsin. “The cost of living in California is ridiculous.”
Humbarger is currently working with a team on the development of several health care related apps under the umbrella of a company called DAPP INC.
Humbarger, the son of Georgia and the late Bill Humbarger, is a graduate of Indianola Academy. He attended Ole Miss and played football and ran track there.
His lifelong dream, however, was to become a movie star, so he left Mississippi in the early-2000s to pursue a career in Hollywood.
And he did find success, landing roles in major productions like Elizabethtown.
Humbarger eventually became involved in the production side of the movie industry, and as his father’s health began to suffer, he started to spend more time back home in Mississippi. He eventually married and had a son, Helms.
The marriage did not last, and when Humbarger was living at his parents’ home in Indianola in 2015, he had an opportunity to get involved in a venture that would eventually change his life.
“In 2015, I was approached by a friend (Justice Kao) from California to help bring funds to a project that he was working on called Loop,” Humbarger said.
Humbarger was working at the time on trying to bring funding to a movie production. He had never worked on raising capital for a tech venture.
He chuckles when he recounts that the company, which is now traded on the New York Stock Exchange, was founded in his parents’ laundry room at their Indianola home.
“We actually brought the seed money for Loop, $4 million,” Humbarger said, adding that the lead investor eventually brought another $6.5 million to the table in the form of a debt note, bringing the total to $10.5 million. “That was the beginning of the company.”
Humbarger served as director of national accounts for Loop, and during those seven years leading up to the company’s public offering, his father’s health got worse.
Over the years, the hospital visits became more frequent, and the stays were longer.
Humbarger would eventually give up the title role with the company, mainly to stay near his son, but also to be close to his dad. Moving up in the company meant he would have to be in California more often.
The decision would have a financial impact, but when it came to staying close to home, Humbarger said it wasn’t a tough choice.
Humbarger said that with each of his dad’s hospital visits, he noticed communication challenges between the physicians in charge of his dad’s care, as well as with the nurses and even the pharmacists filling his many prescriptions.
His mom, he said, was correcting doctors, nurses and pharmacists on almost a daily basis.
Humbarger described some of the medical information technology as “archaic.”
“For one, the information is not very secure, and two, the data are siloed,” Humbarger said. “It doesn’t transfer easily.”
He would relay these experiences to his friend, James Lockard, who had already been involved in the development of multiple apps, Humbarger said.
Lockard apparently had similar experiences with the medical industry - outside of Mississippi - and addressing these issues had become a bit of a passion for him, Humbarger said.
That is when the two linked up to form DAPP INC, which not only is developing apps to tackle the “broken system” of medical information, but there’s also an app that allows doctors practicing anywhere a “rapid expertise exchange” to get real-life expertise from doctors across multiple disciplines from multiple locations across the country.
That’s not to mention the fitness app, iRISE, which promotes individual health for those who may not have the time nor the resources to join a gym.
Humbarger said the team has partnered with an “iconic brand led by a fitness guru” to help elevate the iRISE brand.
Humbarger said iRISE promises to tap into a $63.5 billion industry, which is expected to double by 2030.
“85% of the world already has a mobile phone,” he said.
Duncan Hoopes, who worked as an economist for decades for IBM and PriceWaterhouse, is among the eight currently on the DAPP INC development team.
“The rapid expertise exchange for doctors enables rural physicians in the Delta to have access to other doctors’ expertise outside of the Delta, which magnifies and multiplies their capabilities,” Hoopes said. “They don’t see the kinds of percentage cases of any condition or combination of conditions, whereas if you are in New York, Boston or wherever, you see it all the time. What seems unusual here is quite common in other places.”
The others on the team, aside from Humbarger, Lockard and Hoopes are Will Quinn, Brian Wood, Chuck Howard, Michael Crohan and Brandon Woods.
While there is an AI (artificial intelligence) component to iRISE, the rapid expertise exchange represents a more tradition human approach to medicine, even though technology is still a key factor.
“AI produces answers, there’s no question about that, but the expertise exchange is actually focusing on the expertise,” Hoopes said. “It’s focusing on the individuals involved. Doctors who have real-world experience and real knowledge are actually bringing that to the table, and they’re doing it in a way that goes beyond the amoral AI approach and incorporates the Hippocratic Oath (do no harm), and it ensures that there is a human component.”
Top among the development team’s priorities is cybersecurity and the protection of medical records and data.
The development of these intricate systems is key to Humbarger’s overall vision of bringing a Silicon Valley-type company like DAPP INC to the Mississippi Delta, where many of the problems the team is trying to address are a part of daily life.
“The goal is to have a brick-and-mortar place and to have people employed,” Humbarger said.
The Delta is also a place, Hoopes said, where the creative spirit that brought the world some of the greatest music of all time can be turned on its head and be used to transform health care.
“There is something about the creative genius of Mississippi that resonates with the American spirit, and app development requires that,” Hoopes said. “You can hire as many programmers as you want in India and the Philippines, but you’re not getting that, you’re not getting this creative genius that resonates with the American spirt.”
Humbarger said he believes DAPP INC could have an economic impact in the Delta in a relatively short amount of time.
He said he hopes that by bringing a company like DAPP INC to the Delta, more will follow.
He wants to encourage more people from the region to keep their ideas here instead of taking them elsewhere. He wants to prove that is a real possibility.
“Unfortunately, our creativity has benefitted a lot more places than here,” he said.
Humbarger has already proven that a publicly traded tech company can be founded in the Delta. Now, he’s out to prove that one can be built here and can transform the lives of its citizens, by providing tech jobs and by helping to solve some of the biggest health care challenges in the region.
