CityBusiness 2007 Innovator of the Year Award

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UAppoint Inc.

Key innovation: system for online appointment scheduling
Biggest client: Pat Cassidy & Partners dental practice in Durham, N.C.
Where they're based: New Orleans
Top executive: Dov Glazer, CEO
Year introduced: 2006

It took nearly a decade for dentist Dov Glazer to market his idea for online appointment scheduling, but the payoff was almost immediate.

Glazer said his UAppoint system, which went on sale in 2006 and received a U.S. patent in February, "saves about 70 percent of staff time in terms of front desk communications with patients." He developed the system with his son, Benjamin Glazer, a computer scientist.

In the late 1980's, Glazer's Uptown dental office was one of the early subscribers to broadband Internet service, which gothim thinking about how the speed of the Web might help streamline communications with patients.

During a drive to the University of Texas in Austin, where Benjamin was attending school, the two brainstormed. "Within a few years, (Ben) developed the fundamentals for online appointment scheduling while he was at UT, and then afterwards he spent a whole year writing the code and figuring out all the intricate details," Glazer said.

Ira Halper, proprietor of Halper Dentistry in Terrytown, N.Y., has been a UAppoint customer for close to a year. Already bullish on office automation,he switched to a "paperless" office about eight years ago.

"One of the few things that we weren't able to do in a paperless environment was the recall system, which basically enables our patients to schedule appointments and be notified when they're due, and also to confirm appointments," Halper said. "UAppoint takes care of all those needs."

While other online systems allow patients to request appointment times, they still require staff to determine whether those times are available and call the patient to finalize the appointment.

"What's unique about this, and why we received a patent, is that no other system lets patients actually schedule appointments based on real openings that are available," Glazer said.

Another bonus, Halper said, is "patients tend to keep their appointments and we have less problems with noshows." With its headquarters in New Orleans and a technical support and development team in Austin, UAppoint is looking to expand into medical and veterinary practices.

"Beyond that, we're going to go to a broad spectrum of services, such as automotive and health spas," Glazer said. "Any business that customers make appointments with will benefit from this process."

- Sonya Stinson