Monthly Archives: April 2023

How These Two Founders Are Upgrading Maternal Health Through Cultural Competence and Remote Monitoring

April 27, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedAnish Sebastian, babyscripts, Childrens Health, cultural competence, Health, health equity, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Healthcare, Jade Kearney, Logan Plaster, maternal health, remote patient monitoring, She Matters, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:52 — 21.9MB)

Today in the United States, we do an entirely poor job of taking care of our pregnant mothers. If you look at statistics like maternal morbidity and mortality, it’s been going up. And, through the pandemic, it’s only gone downhill. We’re one of the worst – actually the worst – of any advanced country.

Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW, the podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and innovators who are transforming health.

Today we’ve got two very special guests on the show talking about one extremely important topic: maternal health. This is a topic that has been front and center in health news lately and not for good reasons. In spite of all our progress in healthtech, the US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world.

The World Health Organization reports that a maternal death occurred almost every two minutes in 2020.

What’s worse, maternal health brings to light racial health inequities in a stark and disturbing way. According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.

But we’re not here just to talk about the problem. Our guests are two Health Transformers who have dedicated their lives to changing the maternal health story.

First, you’ll get to hear from Jade Kearney, CEO & Founder of She Matters, a new platform that trains doctors in culturally-competent care so that – among other things – Black women are heard and understood during childbirth. They also created a virtual community for moms to get support and improve the health outcomes for Black mothers.

Next, we’ll have a conversation with Anish Sebastian, CEO & Co-founder of Babyscripts. Babyscripts is a long-time member of our community that is bringing virtual care and remote monitoring into the pregnancy and postpartum journey so that more women get the care they need when and where they need it most.

Listen in for their stories and solutions for upgrading maternal health.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion
Want more content like this? You can subscribe to the podcast as well as other health innovation updates at startuphealth.com/content.
Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Looking to break down health barriers? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.
Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

How Lifestores Is Using Their $3M Raise to Upgrade Drug Procurement in West Africa

April 20, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Cost to Zero, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Lagos, Lifestores, Logan Plaster, Nigeria, West AfricaNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:19 — 23.2MB)

Our guest this week is Andrew Garza, co-founder of Lifestores Healthcare, a company that joined StartUp Health in 2019.

When Andrew and his co-founder Bryan Mezue were launching their business in Lagos, Nigeria, their focus was on creating a chain of tech-enabled pharmacies – and by doing so, they’d create an accessible avenue for primary care in one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.

Fast forward a few years and they’ve done a couple key things, which we’ll cover in the interview. They’ve layered on top of the pharmacy business a platform for drug procurement and logistics that saves hospitals money while raising the bar on quality. And, they’ve raised a $3M pre-Series A, which will allow them to expand in exciting ways. We’ll get into all of that in the conversation, plus hear a bit about Andrew’s journey from the East Coast of the US to the West Coast of Africa.

We hope you enjoy.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Welcome to the Genomic Medicine Revolution

April 14, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsCancer, Cure Disease, End Cancer, genetics, Genomic Medicine, genomics, Logan Plaster, QuantgeneNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:50 — 26.4MB)

On this episode of StartUp Health NOW, we’re talking with Jo Bhakdi, CEO & Founder of Quantgene, a company that joined StartUp Health in 2019. Bhakdi and his team have made a name for themselves by offering a kind of deep genomic profiling that allows them to identify cancers early, detect hereditary diseases, and find adverse drug interactions.

The name of the game here is genomic medicine and we’re not talking about 23andMe or Ancestry.com.

As you’ll hear in the interview, Bhakdi has a revolutionary vision for where the field of genomic medicine is heading in the next five years. And he’s got a strategy for getting there. Spoiler alert: Bhakdi believes that if we can get the cost of genomic testing down – which he’s actively working on – and can scale access to genomic medicine to millions of people, that could knock cancer out of the top 10 list of leading causes of death entirely. Since cancer is currently at number two, it’s a pretty radical idea, but Bhakdi has a strong track record and a compelling market strategy through Quantgene’s new offering called Serenity.

We’ll let him explain the vision in this episode.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

ChatGPT Was Just the Beginning: Victor Wang on the Future of AI in Healthcare

April 6, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAI, artificial intelligence, avatar, care.coach, Chat GPT, ChatGPT, conversational AI, conversational avatar, future of AI, generative AI, Health, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Healthcare, StartUp Health @ ViVE, victor wang, ViVE, ViVE 2023Nicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:12 — 20.3MB)

Victor Wang, CEO & Founder of StartUp Health company care.coach, is at the tip of the spear of the AI-in-health revolution. He’s got an insider’s understanding of how technology like ChatGPT will shape healthcare. An MIT-trained roboticist who worked for NASA, Victor has created a conversational avatar that cares for seniors and people with disabilities. Currently there’s a human in the loop, but as you’ll hear in the interview, Victor has no trouble imagining a future where conversational AI is able to care for people in a more autonomous, scaleable way.

Perhaps most telling, and timely, about this interview, is hearing Victor’s words of caution about the future of artificial intelligence in healthcare and the burden that rests on companies doing this work to get it right, so that we don’t have an AI backlash and lose out on all the ways this technology can help humanity.

Victor is a brilliant founder and always a pleasure to sit down with, even on the noisy floor of a healthcare conference like ViVE. We hope you enjoy.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot