Monthly Archives: October 2023

These Founders Are Pairing AI + SDoH to Re-humanize Healthcare

October 26, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Access to Care Moonshot, AI, Alvee, Alvee Health, artificial intelligence, Chris Turner, generative AI, health equity, Health Equity Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, HealthBook+, HLTH, Logan Plaster, Nicole Cook, SDoH, social determinants of health, StartUp Health @ HLTHNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (27.0MB)

Our episode this week was recorded during our StartUp Health Studio interviews at the recent HLTH conference in Las Vegas. At the event, a hot topic was how artificial intelligence, specifically generative AI, is going to fundamentally shift healthcare delivery. AI can help us comb through mountains of information and take action on data points that were previously hidden from view. But many people have a serious concern – even a fear – that AI will degrade the doctor-patient relationship and effectively dehumanize healthcare.

Our two guests today both joined the StartUp Health community earlier in 2023. They are pushing back against that narrative and suggesting with their companies that AI and big data can be leveraged to re-humanize healthcare delivery.

First we’ll talk with Nicole Cook, the CEO & Founder of Alvee, who is on a health moonshot mission to use AI-driven solutions to promote health equity and improve health outcomes for all. Cook reminds us that doctors are spending an inordinate amount of their time with a patient tapping away at a screen. The status quo is not working, so can new patient data tools help? Can they bring the right information to the surface at the right time and the right way, so healthcare providers can get back to making eye contact with patients?

What’s Cook is building at Alvee is resonating, as she went on to win the HLTH Startup Pitch Competition.

Next, we hear from Chris Turner, CEO & Co-founder at HealthBook+, who is attempting to create a fuller, more human picture of each patient using all available data including data from some nontraditional sources. HealthBook+ provides a simple-to-use, digital-first care platform which consolidates health data and keeps it private, as well as predicts conditions and recommends the next best health actions.

If the top line story for this episode is how data and AI could be used to create a more human electronic health record, the secondary story is about who can benefit from this technology.

Everyone’s talking about social determinants of health. This idea that we need to address the non-medical drivers of health, like access to fresh food and transportation. Healthcare providers care about these issues but don’t have the time or resources to analyze the data. That’s where Alvee Health and HealthBook+ can come in. Providing a fuller, more human analysis of patient data means taking into account important barriers to care and getting smart about how to overcome them.

So let’s get into it.

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A Deep Dive with Jetsweat Founders: Bridging the Gap from Physical to Emotional Fitness

October 19, 2023Business, Fitness, Health, Innovation, StartupsNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (36.9MB)

This week’s StartUp Health NOW podcast episode is a conversation with Health Transformers Alexandra Dantzig and Erin Frankel, the co-founders of Jetsweat. As you’ll hear, their company started out as a fittech marketplace for boutique fitness brands, helping these small independent fitness companies create high-quality digital content and reach new audiences.

Recently, however, Jetsweat – which joined StartUp Health in 2022 – has made moves into the realm of value-based, whole person care. They’ve launched what they call Jetsweat Health and they have their sights set on helping large employers and insurers keep their people healthy. The idea is instead of offering your employees or members a simple discount to a couple of national fitness chains, offer them access to a marketplace of hundreds or even thousands of unique high-quality boutique fitness brands that meet their specific needs and desires.

Jetsweat is also stepping into mental health with new offerings around emotional fitness. They’re making very clear connections between preventative physical fitness and preventative emotional fitness by treating mental health more like a daily workout that everyone can benefit from. They’re lowering the barriers to care and decreasing the stigma attached with seeking help.

Listen in for their journey.

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Quantifying Mental Health: How Mobio Interactive Is Unleashing Precision Psychiatry at Scale

October 5, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsBechara Saab, Digital Health, health innovation, Health Moonshot, Health Tech, Health Transformer, Innovation, Logan Plaster, mental health, Mobio Interactive, StartUp Health NowNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:14 — 31.2MB)

There’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in business: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” It’s a quote attributed to Peter Drucker, the famed management consultant.‌

If business leaders such as Peter Drucker are right, not being able to measure the effect of an action would make it impossible to know if we should be doing more or less of that action – or if we should be doing it at all.

But if the saying is true in management, it’s even more true in clinical medicine in most areas of healthcare. Despite this seeming to be self evident, you’ve got to measure it to manage it yet there are still swathes of care that are delivered by some version of trial and error.‌

Our guest this week is Bechara Saab, PhD, CEO, Chief Scientist & Co-founder of Mobio Interactive, a company that joined the StartUp Health community in 2022.‌

Dr. Saab started as an academic researcher. It’s safe to say he loves measuring, loves gathering hard data and proving that he has found causation not just correlation in his work. So when his research introduced him to the modern world of mental health diagnosis and mental healthcare, he was taken aback by what he saw as a lack of solid objective measurements.‌

How could you help someone with anxiety, for instance, if you couldn’t accurately measure their anxiety before and after a treatment?‌

That is the thorny challenge that Dr. Saab is tackling with Mobio Interactive.

As you’ll hear, he’ll explain just how his research led to a solution that provides those objective measurements. His company, based in Singapore, came up with an accessible tool that provides clinically-validated therapy within a platform that objectively quantifies how a patient’s mental health is affected by therapy in real time and without a wearable, thereby allowing personalization of mental health therapy at scale.

Enjoy!

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