Waterloo student’s experience and technical skills help growing health-care startups
By: Maddie Savage (she/her)
Empowering patients to make informed health decisions inspired the mother-daughter combo, Jessica and Jordan Lunshof, to create a health management platform called TAMVOES and to launch a company called TAMCARE Home Health.
Jessica Lunshof (she/her)
Founder of both TAMVOES and TAMCARE
Jessica Lunshof (she/her), founder of both TAMVOES and TAMCARE, is a registered nurse. She became a caregiver to her grandmother and her mother when they both faced health issues.
That experience inspired Jessica to pursue a career in health-care innovation and to launch the platform and the company.
Jessica, and her daughter Jordan, noticed that their loved ones constantly had to retell their story with every introduction to a health-care worker.
The mobile app, TAMVOES, helps to organize information so that health-care visits are not as exhausting and dragged out for patients as they navigate the health-care system.
Since its inception, co-op students have helped with the technical development and marketing of the TAMVOES platform.
“Considering it was founded in the summer right before my first co-op term, and it was in the early stages of development, my mother asked me if I thought it would be a good fit for my co-op and I believed it would,” says Jordan.
Jordan began her co-op search through WaterlooWorks but decided that her personal connection to TAMVOES was the best option for her. So, she arranged her own job to work at TAMVOES for her first co-op term. Jordan then returned to the company for subsequent work terms so Jessica could pursue TAMCARE.
TAMCARE Home Health is an all-inclusive home care company that helps manage consultations, housekeeping and personal support services for patients. TAMCARE’s mission is to help loved ones manage home care at any stage of life.
“We aim to give families the opportunity to take the stress off themselves to care for their loved ones,” explains Jordan. “We wanted to give people the opportunity to choose where they would like to pass or where they would like to receive their care.”
Jordan Lunshof (she/her)
Fourth-year Kinesiology co-op student and director at TAMVOES
Students bring innovative ideas to startups
Jessica co-founded TAMVOES in 2019 with another co-op student — Madison McBay. McBay, who is no longer with the company, won the 2021 Waterloo Co-op Student of the Year award for helping to launch the startup.
“Our very first co-op students came from Waterloo. They are all very hardworking and they came in with an open mind considering we were a startup,” says Jordan.
At TAMVOES, Jordan recruits co-op students for marketing and development roles. The company hires students from Waterloo’s Business, Computer Science and Engineering programs to work in remote, hybrid and in-person settings.
Student roles at TAMVOES include application development, quality assurance (QA) testing, and social media — where they assist in marketing the app.
Students bring a lot of innovation and ideas, and they allow us to improve our business every single day. We believe that young minds have an eye for change and that's something that we aspire for and try to reach for everyday at TAMVOES.
Startups give students the opportunity to learn valuable skills
Through Waterloo’s co-op program, Jordan completed three co-op terms at TAMVOES and one at TAMCARE. The experience helped her to shape her future goals as she was progressing through her degree at Waterloo. Working for a smaller organization gave her the opportunity to build essential skills that she believes will be useful later in her career.
“It's building connections through all the little events and gatherings that you go to,” says Jordan. “Things like preparing for pitches and simply taking phone calls are some skills that people miss out on in bigger organizations.”
As startups, both TAMVOES and TAMCARE provide students with the opportunity to learn how to problem solve and how to adapt to change.
“It's not always going to go smoothly, as we call them growing pains at TAMVOES,” says Jordan. “It allows you to be able to be resilient and to bounce back.”