The Spider making health records more accessible and understandable

Accessing your health records shouldn’t feel harder than accessing your bank account. Yet millions of patients struggle with administrative friction and low health literacy and wind up repeatedly explaining their medical history.

“I saw these very real pain points within my day-to-day job,” said Gabe Hillegass, ’03, an academic pain medicine physician and professor of anesthesiology at the Medical University of South Carolina.

In 2023, Hillegass launched Solverein, a technology startup to make medical records more secure, accessible, and understandable. “This,” he said, “was a way I could divert my intellectual effort and sweat equity to create something meaningful.”

The company’s first product, MedicalEase, streamlines the record retrieval process. Patient authorization, identity verification, and information transfer pass within a highly secure architecture.  The platform leverages artificial intelligence to help patients understand complex medical information.

Building this challenged Hillegass. “I remember initially not knowing what to type or ask [the chatbot],” he said. “And being afraid: ‘What if I type the wrong thing and I mess it up?’”

But curiosity quickly replaced hesitation. Hillegass explored how emerging technologies could reshape health information management. But Solverein was not built alone. Several fellow alumni helped with advising, strategy, and operational support — including Adam Coughlin, ’05.

“Adam and his colleagues at York IE have been instrumental partners,” Hillegass said. “Our shared Richmond experience and friendship created the opportunity for us to reengage and collaborate again. It’s been a fun process!”

Hillegass says the experience reinforced a lesson that extends beyond healthcare and entrepreneurship. “It’s the people,” he said about UR. “It’s all about the people,” a sentiment he says reflects Solverein’s mission: Using technology to make healthcare feel more human again.