Recent Phillip J. Patiño High graduate Luke Gomez is a founding member of Apollo Portal, a revolutionary app that he hopes can change the way medical clinics handle paperwork. Screen capture

The future of the medical industry is in tech.

Scratch that.

The future of nearly every industry is in tech.

That’s one of the biggest educational takeaways that recent Phillip J. Patiño High School graduate Luke Gomez has come away with as he embarks on his journey into the business world.

Accessible technology — app-based, website-based or based on innovations we have yet to dream of — is the future of the business landscape; for young entrepreneurs like Gomez, and even seasoned entrepreneurs looking to expand their reach into new markets.

 

The path

“I’ve always been an entrepreneur in some way shape or form,” Gomez said. “My dad started his own company; when I was much younger he started doing handyman service work. That grew into something amazing and he’s still doing that now.”

Gomez, 17, started his entrepreneurial journey young. At 12-years-old, he launched his first business venture — LKG Customs — customizing sneakers and shoes. The venture was born out of his work ethic.

Before starting LKG Customs, Gomez worked small neighborhood jobs such as taking neighbors’ trash cans to the street to help build capital to found the business.

Gomez began networking shortly after launching LKG Customs when Christian rapper Miles Minnick performed at Gomez’s church youth group and Gomez misinterpreted a comment left on LKG Customs’ Instagram page.

“He commented on one of my posts, just a word of encouragement,” he said. “I completely misunderstood it and said, ‘Definitely let’s get something in your size.’”

More than five years later, LKG Customs have worked on over ten pairs of shoes for the rapper and continue to work with his team.

 

School for entrepreneurs

Gomez was a freshman at the Phillip J. Patiño School of Entrepreneurship in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Rather than sitting at home, though, Gomez got to work researching business and entrepreneurship techniques and goals for his future.

“During that time, I kept drawing, kept creating, and then finally from freshman year to sophomore year, from being digital and being all online to being full-time in person, Mr. T (Damon Thomas) and Mr. P (Curlen Phipps) from Quiq Labs actually gave me the opportunity to be one of the entrepreneurs — to be one of the businesses that the sophomore class would create a website for,” Gomez said.

Gomez would also sit down outside of class time with his instructors seeking coaching and guidance for a variety of business basics — learning how to write invoices, request quotes and other entrepreneurial-related pointers.

After creating two business websites, Gomez said that entrepreneurial knowledge spans into the digital side of things now and whether entrepreneurs gain this knowledge independently or rely on someone who specializes in app and tech development, it is essential for new entrepreneurs to have access to.

“The biggest thing I’d say is, for any entrepreneur, especially young entrepreneurs, we’re living in a time where if you want to find information you can look it up,” Gomez said. “If you’re thinking of creating an app, there’s hundreds and hundreds of apps; there are so many things that you can look up.”

 

Apollo Portal

After returning to school in-person his sophomore year, Gomez got together with a team of fellow entrepreneurs to launch their latest business venture, Apollo Portal.

Aiming to revolutionize the cumbersome process of filling out paperwork in the medical industry, Apollo Portal, an innovative business model designed by local, young entrepreneurs, hopes to expedite the process of visiting a doctor’s office.

The concept arose from the founders’ experiences at family doctor visits. Gomez and the team, each of whom come from large families, noted that doctor visits often take more time than needed simply due to the amount of paperwork that needs to be filled out for each individual patient at each individual visit.

“We all just looked back and remembered moments where our younger siblings are crying and sitting down and they don’t want to be at the doctor’s office in the first place…we just all decided ‘we can fix it,’ he said.”

Apollo Portal (Apollo-portal.com) aims to consolidate that information into one easy-to-use platform, accessible to both the user and the health care provider.

Members of the team, including Gomez, whose aunt works at a local medical clinic, sourced information and details from family and friends employed in the medical field, learning about some of the steps that would be required in order to turn their dream into a viable business venture.

Gomez and his team are still in the process of building their knowledge of the medical industry. Due to its complexity, Gomez and Apollo Portal are still sourcing information and resources to help them further develop the business into a viable option for the health care industry.

“We don’t really see this happening within the next few months. This is something that we see spanning over the next few years,” Gomez said. “The biggest thing that we want to do is we want to modernize the medical industry; we want to create it as efficient and as cost-effective as possible.”

Gomez said that their goals can be met with the proper support from the medical industry.