Watching her optometrist father wrestle with the customer screening process during the Covid pandemic inspired Emily Dieterichs ’15. The result: eRrivals.

eRrivals is an app that serves as a virtual waiting room for any business, handling the screening process before a customer enters the premises. 

Dieterichs and her sister, Katie Barela, developed the app with their father Dr. Daniel Dieterichs in mind. They saw the difficult effort his practice went through to screen patients, who had to call to say they were there, fill out a questionnaire before they entered the office, staff going back and forth to unlock the door to let screened patients in.

“We thought, what can we do to ease the transition from regular life to (how we live under) Covid,” Dieterichs said. “How nice would it be to develop an app that would regulate customer flow.”

With eRrivals, the business purchases the screening platform and informs their customers they can download the free app and connect with their practice through it. The app takes the customer’s contact information for contact tracing and asks the Covid screening questions. 

The business can take the customer’s temperature when they are allowed in the building and can then enter it in the app. Once the business receives the information, the customer receives a notification from the app that they can enter the premises.

If a customer doesn’t have a smartphone, the business can manually check someone in over the phone and enter their information into the system. All the information is time stamped so businesses know who was in their business at that time. Dieterichs said the app is ideal for medical, therapist and law offices, fitness centers and schools.

“In the future we want this to become something that is used not just for Covid,” Dieterichs said. “We want it to become something we can integrate with other businesses and their software. For retail it could send messages to customers that a sale is going on, that they’re closed today, or that a product, like glasses, is ready.” 

She also sees it as a patient portal for filling out a patient history so there’s no sitting in a waiting room or as a platform for asking how a visit went. 

“When everything is electronic, it should save time for biz owners,” she said. “A technician or nurse who won’t have to take the answers to all those questions can be repurposed and help see more patients.”

The sisters came up with the idea and in July 2020 hired an app developer and by October 2020 it was ready to launch. The app is available in the Apple Store and on Google Play. The next challenge is getting businesses to use it. Dieterichs said it may be beneficial to work with an electronic medical records system to add it into a service they already offer to medical providers.

Along with developing apps in her spare time, Dieterichs teaches Algebra 1 and Honors Algebra 2/Trigonometry at St. Pius X. An applied math major who studied at New Mexico Tech and graduated from the University of New Mexico, she joined the staff at SPX in August 2019 after substitute teaching for the previous school year. 

As a new teacher at the school she attended just four years earlier, she was bound to work alongside the teachers who taught her. “Coming back, there were teachers who were very quick to switch from me being a student to a colleague,” she said. “They don’t treat me as younger and value my opinions.” 

During the virtual learning required during 2020 and 2021, she even had the opportunity to help some learn to use YouTube to enhance their remote teaching. 

A basketball player during her four years at SPX and with a school commute from her home in Belen, Dieterichs said she had to learn to have balance and manage her time well. She appreciated Barbara Ducaj ’79, now her colleague in the math department, and English teacher Mimosa Finley for inspiring her to work hard.

“The biggest thing about Pius is I had to learn work ethic,” she said. “It made me stronger as a person because I had to work hard. It set me up for success in college as my high school  schedule was way more time consuming than it was in college.

“The other thing about Pius is its caring about people. You are surrounded by people who are good, sound people. You feel safe at Pius and you’re close to people.”