The Detroit-Based Startup Reinventing How Healthcare Professionals Learn

When Dr. Joshua Olson started teaching nurse-anesthesia students, he didn’t expect to become a software founder. But after years of watching bright, driven students burn out before graduation, he realized the real problem wasn’t motivation. It was the way people were being taught.

The Problem: Memorization Without Retention

Joshua saw the same cycle every semester. Students would cram for board exams, reading dense textbooks, highlighting entire chapters, staying up late—and then forget most of what they’d learned within weeks. “They weren’t learning less,” he says. “They were just learning inefficiently.”

Healthcare education, he realized, hadn’t caught up to the science of how people actually remember things. “We’ve had decades of research on how to make learning stick—spaced repetition, retrieval practice, gamification,” says Joshua. “But in higher education, especially healthcare, we weren’t using any of it.”

That disconnect wasn’t just frustrating; it was dangerous. In a field where knowledge fades fast and mistakes can cost lives, forgetting isn’t a small problem. It’s a systemic one.

A Real-Life Moment of Inspiration

One of Joshua’s doctoral students planted the seed that would become Ollivate. After testing spaced-repetition techniques in class and seeing huge improvements, the student asked, “What if we combined all these learning strategies into one tool?”

That question became a challenge. Joshua teamed up with his wife, April Olson—a longtime educator and learning-experience designer—to explore what that could look like. “We both saw the same thing,” she says. “Students were overwhelmed. Professionals were tired. Everyone was expected to keep learning, but nobody was helping them enjoy the process.”

They started experimenting with an app that would feel more like Duolingo than a digital textbook: a game-like interface that rewards daily engagement, nudges users to review material before they forget it, and breaks big concepts into small, digestible moments of learning.

The Solution: Making Learning Feel Human Again

Ollivate first launched in the nurse-anesthesia market—Joshua’s specialty. Within months, users were calling it a breakthrough in how they learn.

One student, juggling classes and a ten-month-old baby, told the team that Ollivate had changed how she studied. “She said she could rock her baby to sleep at night and still study for her board exams,” April recalls. “That’s what we mean when we say ‘learning that fits your life.’”

From those early adopters, the company has grown to nearly 6,000 users. The app now serves both students and working healthcare providers who must complete mandatory continuing-education credits to maintain their licenses. “It’s not just board prep anymore,” says Joshua. “It’s a lifelong learning companion.”

Partnerships That Prove the Model

In 2024, the Olsons pitched Ollivate at the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology (AANA) national conference. They had an early prototype and a clear mission: make professional learning more accessible and engaging.

The AANA’s response was immediate: they offered to partner and invest. “They saw the same opportunity we did,” says April. “Their members were asking for a better way to learn, and they wanted to support a company founded by a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) doing exactly that.”

Through the partnership, the association’s 70,000 members gained access to Ollivate’s platform, while AANA shared in the revenue. The collaboration became a blueprint for future partnerships with other professional associations and hospital systems that want to modernize their education offerings.

Hospitals, meanwhile, see Ollivate as a recruitment and retention tool. “Every hospital CEO will tell you the same thing: they can’t find enough providers,” says Joshua. “We can’t train them fast enough, and we can’t keep them engaged long enough. Making education more flexible and effective helps with both.”

That’s when support from Michigan’s startup ecosystem and a connection to the MSU Research Foundation helped Ollivate move from early concept to scalable company.

Accelerating from Idea to Impact

When the Olsons joined the MSU Research Foundation’s Conquer Detroit Accelerator, powered by Henry Ford Health, they were still early in their journey: two educators with a promising prototype and a growing list of users. What they found was a collaborative environment that helped them think and operate like founders.

“The biggest takeaway wasn’t just mentorship,” says April. “It was the rhythm of accountability. Every week we met with other founders in our cohort, shared wins and challenges, and left with clear goals for the next seven days. That structure and sense of community completely changed how we work as a team.”

The accelerator’s connection to the MSU Research Foundation and Henry Ford Health also opened doors that most early-stage healthcare startups can’t easily access. “We were suddenly in conversations with hospital leaders, investors, and mentors who understood both the clinical and entrepreneurial sides of what we were building,” says Joshua. “As an academic and clinician, that was all new to me. The accelerator gave us the language, the network, and the confidence to take the next step.”

Even after the accelerator program ended, the relationships have endured. “We still meet with our mentors and stay connected with our cohort,” April adds. “It wasn’t a ten-week sprint and goodbye—it’s an ecosystem that continues to show up for us.”

The Results: Early Traction, Real Impact

In less than a year, Ollivate crossed $100,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and is now on pace to double that. But the founders are quick to point out that impact, not income, is their metric for success.

“Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S.,” says April. “We can’t solve that with one app, but we can make sure healthcare providers remember what matters most when it counts.”

The platform’s built-in AI helps users do exactly that, predicting when they’re likely to forget key information and prompting them to review it. “It’s like a digital preceptor that knows what you’re struggling with before you do,” says Joshua.

Vision: A Smarter, Safer Future for Learning

The Olsons imagine a world where every healthcare professional, from students to seasoned clinicians, can open their phone and instantly see what they need to review that day. “We want learning to be something you do continuously, not something you dread or delay,” says Joshua.

And while they’re starting in healthcare, their ambitions go far beyond it. “Once the platform is built,” April explains, “any industry that requires certification, like finance, law, or education, can plug their content into it.”

From Detroit, the couple is building what could become the foundation for lifelong learning across industries. “We’re raising our family here, building our company here, and we want to show that you don’t have to leave Michigan to build something meaningful,” says April.

Ollivate is now raising its next round of investment to expand into new healthcare specialties and professional associations. Learn more at ollivate.com or follow their journey on social media.