Ask any collegiate EMS provider about the end of a long day shift or even worse an overnight shift and you’ll hear some version of the same thing: the calls are finished, but the charts are not. For Joshua Ackerman and Yoav Reshef, two EMTs with Harpur’s Ferry Student Volunteer Ambulance Service at Binghamton University, that recurring moment became the seed of a company. This spring, they were awarded a $25,000 grand prize at the New York Business Plan Competition.

Ackerman and Reshef, both members of the Class of 2027 in Binghamton’s School of Management, took the top award at the New York Business Plan Competition (NYBPC) for Lucent EMS Solutions, a venture built to make patient care documentation faster and more accurate. It was the first time Binghamton University had ever won the competition’s grand prize. The pair took first place in the NYBPC’s Health & Wellbeing track, advancing to a final live pitch-off against the first-place winners of the other five industry categories to claim the overall grand prize.

Both founders have been EMTs since high school, and found their way to Harpur’s Ferry, a nonprofit, student-run agency that has provided support and care to the Binghamton campus and surrounding community since 1973. For Ackerman, who worked his way up to the agency chief’s office, the pull was the people. Members “genuinely care and want to be there,” he said, describing a culture where students train in-house and take real responsibility for their patients. Reshef frames the work as a rare opportunity saying “There are very few things you can do at this age like this”, adding that he encourages newer members not to limit themselves. This mindset is what led Reshef and Ackerman to found the company and see it through to success. 

That firsthand experience is exactly where Lucent began. Documentation, Reshef notes, is the one part of the job that follows a provider to every agency. After a single 911 call, writing up a report can take anywhere from 20 minutes to more than an hour. However, this time adds up in a collegiate setting where students split their time between classes, often creating a rushed environment; even if that wasn’t the intent. Things become complicated when calls begin to cluster on nights and weekends, creating backlogs. Students are often documenting one patient while trying to make it to class, straining to recall the details of an incident from hours earlier, as Reshef stated: “The details become very hard to remember, especially for the earlier patients”. 

The stakes go beyond lost time. Patient care reports are legal records that hospitals, insurers, and even courts may later rely on. Reshef points out that emergency physicians depend on them to understand what care patients receive in the prehospital setting. When a provider is prioritizing the emergency in front of them, reconstructing every detail afterward becomes genuinely hard.

The idea took shape in February when Reshef started texting Ackerman with ways to automate the process. Their solution captures both audio and visual information from the scene, more than a simple scribe or dictation tool, and parses it into a structured patient care report. Crucially, the founders describe the software as an aid, not a replacement. The software drafts the chart; a human still reviews and signs off on every one.

Privacy and accuracy sit at the center of the design. The team is building on HIPAA-compliant language models, where recordings are not stored, and the system is designed to surface its own confidence, leaving a field blank when it isn’t sure rather than guessing. This would allow providers to stay vigilant rather than complacent as well as ensure patient security is maintained.

Reaching the final took months. The team pitched through a 15-minute regional round, produced a video for an intermediate round, and advanced as a state finalist in Health & Wellbeing before the grand stage. Along the way, they leaned on mentorship from Dr. Chou-Yu Tsai, who played a fundamental role in helping them develop an effective business plan and pitch, as well as Mike Bronikowski, who offered insights as past winner of NYBPC, gave them feedback on the company and provided crucial technological support. Along with SOM Deans and a network of alumni and fellow students, including one of the original founders of Harpur’s Ferry, Ackerman and Reshef had the support to make their company a reality. The founders also credit their own discipline centered on daily “lock-in” calls to align on goals, roughly four slide decks scrapped along the way, and a habit of covering for each other during exam season. Additionally, most of the prize money, the founders say, will go toward software development as they grow their team.

For a pair juggling full course loads, agency leadership, and a startup, the win has been validating, but their advice to other collegiate EMS members stays grounded. “When there’s something you need to do, you just need to do it,” Reshef said. Ackerman offers a complementary lesson, learned from those scrapped slide decks: “Success can be intimidating, but you can do it. Sometimes you put a lot of work into something, and it turns out terrible. That’s redirection, not the end.”

For two providers who started by wishing for a better way to close out a chart during busy days, the goal is simple: give EMS crews their time back, and give patients better care. If it works, the agency that inspired Lucent may be the first to feel the difference.