The great ice storm that struck North Texas during Super Bowl week in 2011 did more than just make it difficult for fans to make it to the big game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

The ice-covered roads also made it nearly impossible for doctors and hospitals to secure much-needed blood to treat patients.

The storm gave Chris Godfrey the idea to create an ecosystem that connected blood banks with hospitals to ensure that the life-saving supplies could flow not just locally but across the nation.

“We learned that the blood supply across the country is hyper-fragmented; it is a local business.”
Chris Godfrey

He launched Dallas-based BloodSolutions in 2013 — now called Bloodbuy — as a way for blood banks and hospitals to connect and procure blood, according to the Dallas Business Journal.

“We learned that the blood supply across the country is hyper-fragmented; it is a local business. And being that it is, by definition, localized, it creates these silos,” Godfrey told the Business Journal. “You have these areas at one point in time that may have an abundance of blood supply, while at the same time, another geography might have a shortage.”

Godfrey told the Business Journal that, “Once we identified that as a pervasive issue, we started to think about how we could use technology to handle this challenge.”

The company’s technology not only connects blood banks with hospitals, it helps the hospitals save money.

Bloodbuy’s technology last year won the first Harvard Medical School Health Acceleration Challenge, beating out nearly 500 other companies and sharing a $150,000 prize with four finalists. Bloodbuy received an additional $50,000 as the final winner.

This year, Bloodbuy is a finalist for two categories in the Tech Titan Awards — emerging company innovation and emerging company CEO. The annual awards are presented by Tech Titans, the largest tech trade association in Texas.

Dallas Innovates, every day