Summary Medical hopes it is the next wave in InsurTech

By Anna Lardinois Startup Storyteller

Cint Laskowski’s lifelong career in technology was launched by a childhood trip to Adler Planetarium in Chicago. His fascination with the planets created a longing to explore every aspect of the night sky. To study astronomy, Laskowski needed equipment, and it was up to him to build it.

He spent hours at the Cudahy library poring over electronics manuals and technical guides until he had the skills to create the tools he needed to pursue his goals. Ultimately, he was able to build his own telescope and then created the motor and other tools he needed to begin astrophotography.

That tenacity followed Laskowski into adulthood. And the skills he developed reading through dusty stacks of technical materials translated well into a career in computers. Ultimately, Laskowski spent 23 years in the Army Reserves while developing a civilian career in computer software and cyber security. Always interested in entrepreneurship, Laskowski decided to begin his own venture in 2019.

His company, Summary Medical, creates software to aid underwriters in the review of medical records.

The company began when Laskowski was looking for a new challenge and entered Northwestern Mutual’s first Reverse Pitch contest in 2018. He created a proposal for the Streamlining Medical Record Review category, offering a solution that used Natural Language Processing to speed the processing time of scanned medical records. While his company was not selected to move forward, he found the experience an educational one. He decided to move forward on his own and formed Summary Medical in June 2019.

From there, the company participated in the Summer 2019 cohort of gBETA. Laskowski recalls his experience with the early-stage accelerator positively, singling out program director, Molly Dill, for praise.

“Molly is fantastic,” he said. “She is just so full of energy. She’s very positive all the time. When I talk with her,  she’s in it for the long run. I’ve been through some ups and downs with this, and she’s always been someone that I’ve been able to talk to. She always has suggestions for me and people to meet or talk to.”

Laskowski continues to rely on Dill for advice and support as his company grows.

Summary Medical was one of the eight InsurTech companies chosen to participate in the Global Insurance Accelerator. Laskowski packed his bags and temporarily relocated to Des Moines, Iowa for the opportunity. The 100-day program came with industry-focused mentoring and an investment of $75,000, which allowed the company to add a data scientist to the team.

Laskowski found the support for entrepreneurship in Des Moines impressive.

“The city has a really great models of supporting their entrepreneurs,” he said. “The whole city is basically focused on supporting the insurance industry.”

He is still connected to the Iowa resources and praises their commitment to communicating with entrepreneurs. He admires the way the existing insurance companies in Iowa’s capital city financially support the Global Insurance Accelerator collaboratively. He would like to see specific industries in Milwaukee join forces to create opportunities for innovators.

Laskowski is focused on the future, even as he creates the initial version of his software. While the target user of the software is the insurance industry, the CEO sees an opportunity for the legal industry to use the product.

“I’ve expanded the scope to include the legal profession, because a lot of different legal professionals review medical records,” he said. “And a lot of healthcare workers do not have access to electronic versions of these medical records, because they might not be in that hospital or in that healthcare system — (or) they might be in another system, and they would then have the same problems (accessing digital records).”

Moving forward, Laskowski has been accepted into the Veterans in Residence Incubator program. With the recent staff addition of a software developer, Laskowski believes his software will be ready to launch a pilot version sometime in 2022 . 

To follow Summary Medical on their evolution from groundbreaking idea to working product, watch their progress here.