UNeMed Business Development Manager and Morning Edition organizer Tyler Scherr, PhD, addresses the gathering during brief welcoming remarks at the April 30, 2026, installment of Idea Pub: Morning Edition in the Forge Event Hall at Catalyst Omaha in the Edge District.
OMAHA, Nebraska (April 30, 2026)—Idea Pub: Morning Edition underwent a temporary program shift today, delivering a full slate of early-stage Nebraska startups, including a handful that have reached the midpoint of the Steel Works Health Accelerator program.
For the first time, the networking event was held in the afternoon and provided space and audience for five health-related startups, all of which are built around University of Nebraska inventions.
“It should be obvious—hopefully obvious to everyone in this room, at least—that the University drives innovation,” event organizer and UNeMed Business Development Manager, Tyler Scherr, PhD, said during opening remarks.
What soon followed was an array of five early-stage Nebraska startup companies built around home-grown novel solutions. They included more effective diagnostic platforms and devices, better-training for cariologists, more streamlined medical prescription processes, and a potentially significant improvement to surgical safety.
Three members of the Steel Works Health Accelerator’s inaugural cohort—Aprendo Cardiovascular Solutions, Deep Health Diagnostics and BreezeMed—were among the five who delivered 10-minute presentations. (Steel Works is a three-month program that trains, supports and mentors early-stage startup companies built around emerging University of Nebraska innovations.)
RespirAI and Rheam Medical also delivered updates about their companies.
Ed O’Leary, MD, an interventional cardiologist and CEO of Aprendo Cardiovascular Solutions, discusses his innovative approach to training better cardiologists during his presentation at the April 30, 2026, installment of Idea Pub: Morning Edition in the Forge Event Hall at Catalyst Omaha in the Edge District.
Aprendo, founded by interventional cardiologist Ed O’Leary, MD, is building a better way to teach the intricacies of navigating a catheter to and around a patient’s heart.
“They struggle to learn this,” he said. “It’s a very complex thing to learn because they’re using a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional object.”
Dr. O’Leary said his solution helps render the heart and its complex of twisting arteries and veins into a three-dimensional model that speeds the training process. At the same time, it also makes the training more effective by using proven concepts often found in video games.
Deep Health Diagnostics, led by ophthalmologists Ron Krueger, MD, and Ashok Puri, MBBS, is working on a software package that leverages the power of AI. Their diagnostic system promises to standardize the diagnosis of the world’s leading case of vision loss, macular edema. Current approaches are too often subject to a doctor’s interpretation and then treated in a one-size-fits-all approach.
Deep Health Diagnostics’ platform could help clinical providers use more objective data for more specific—and earlier—diagnoses. Such an early and specific diagnosis could then help a doctor tailor a treatment program that could dramatically improve a patient’s long-term vision health.
UNMC psychologist Stephen Salzbrenner, MD, opened his presentation for BreezMed with a powerful story about a patient going through a life-threatening mental crisis. After prescribing the patient with potentially life-saving medication, he learned too late the patient’s insurance provider ultimately denied the prescription at the pharmacy for lack of “prior authorization.” Dr. Salzbrenner said he never saw the patient again and still doesn’t know what became of them.
He vowed to do all he could to make certain that wouldn’t happen again. He founded BreezMed, a software solution that helps clinicians and patients avoid the hurdles and roadblocks associated with health insurance and their prior authorization denials.
RespirAI’s Managing Director for U.S. Operations, Jonell Tempero, presented her company’s approach to reducing the deadly effects of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD. The fifth leading cause of death in the U.S., lower raspatory diseases are most dangerous during a sudden flare up of symptoms called an exacerbation.
Predicting those flare ups have been impossible until a logarithm developed by RespirAI empowers wearable devices—such as a sticky patch about the size of a playing card or even a smartwatch—with the ability to seek treatment several hours, or even days, before the flare-up begins.
Rheam Medical’s CEO and founder Riley Reynolds closed out the presentations. Based in Lincoln, Rheam is building a surgical device aimed at preventing a common complication associated with minimally invasive surgery in the lower abdomen.
The first step involves the surgeon piercing the patient’s skin, muscle and tissue to insert a device called a trocar. The trocar serves as a portal through which the surgeon can safely insert various tools, cameras and other instruments. The problem, Reynolds said, is that about 170 patients each day suffer from complications resulting from a surgeon inadvertently puncturing an organ during this initial step.
Riley Reynolds, CEO and founder of Rheam Medical, explains how his company plans to improve minimally invasive procedures during his presentation at the networking event, Idea Pub: Morning Edition, held in the Forge Event Hall at Catalyst Omaha in the Edge District on April 30, 2026.
Reynolds, a mechanical engineer, said Rheam’s device and trocar system all but removes that complication as a possibility.
Morning Edition is UNeMed’s and UNeTech Institute’s networking event for university innovators, entrepreneurs and startup community members. Catalyst Omaha co-sponsors the event and provides free tours of the spacious facility.
Additional sponsors include biomedical investment and mentoring firm CQuence Health and Arbor Bank, which provides coffee and doughnuts to guests.
Morning Edition will continue to be a fixture in the Forge Event Hall, located on the north end of Catalyst Omaha in the Edge District. Guided tours, coffee and doughnuts will also continue as added features.
The next Idea Pub: Morning Edition will be held Thursday, May 28, 2026, at 9 a.m. The featured speaker is expected to be Adrian Blake, CEO at Precision Syringe, a startup built on an innovative design created at UNMC.
