Category Archives: Innovation

Phyllis Ferrell Named Chief Impact Officer for StartUp Health’s Alzheimer’s Moonshot

February 2, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAlzheimer's, Alzheimer's Moonshot, Brain health, Dementia, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Logan Plaster, Phyllis Ferrell, StartUp HealthNicole Kinsey

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In January, StartUp Health launched the Alzheimer’s Moonshot with support from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and Gates Ventures. The Alzheimer’s Moonshot is an invitation to Health Transformers, Alzheimer’s funders, foundations, advocates, and innovators, as well as leading startups and research teams, to unite in pioneering comprehensive, collaborative approaches to Alzheimer’s disease.

The Alzheimer’s Moonshot Community is powered by StartUp Health and our Health Transformer University, an entrepreneurial mastery program and lifelong learning community for ambitious founders and funders who are solving the biggest health challenges of our time.

That brings us to our podcast guest this week. Phyllis Ferrell, DrPH, will serve as the Chief Impact Officer of the Alzheimer’s Moonshot and lead its Impact Board. Ferrell has three decades of related experience, most recently serving as the Global Head of Alzheimer’s and Neurodegeneration at Eli Lilly and Strategic Advisor to the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative. The Alzheimer’s Moonshot Impact Board will also include representatives from the ADDF, Gates Ventures, and a diverse group of stakeholders from industry, clinical medicine, academia, investment and patient and caregiver communities.

As we will discuss in the episode, shortly after Ferrell transferred from a marketing and sales role at Lilly to leading their Alzheimer’s division, her father was diagnosed with the devastating disease. She threw herself into the work and eventually became a leading voice in Alzheimer’s research and drug development. She’s served as a strategic advisor to multiple high-profile Alzheimer’s organizations, and now she’s marshaling her experience to lead StartUp Health’s Alzheimer’s Moonshot. We caught up with her to get a better understanding of where she sees this initiative going and why this is such a unique moment in time for Alzheimer’s innovation.

Enjoy the episode and then learn more about StartUp Health’s Alzheimer’s Moonshot at startuphealth.com/alzheimers.

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? Learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

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Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

Mission Aligned: Helmsley Charitable Trust and StartUp Health on T1D Moonshot

January 26, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsDavid Panzirer, diabetes, Diabetes Moonshot, Helmsley, Helmsley Charitable Trust, Logan Plaster, T1D, T1D Moonshot, Type 1 Diabetes, Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot, Type I DiabetesNicole Kinsey

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

Typically on this show we talk to founders of startups. We’re all about understanding what’s new and next in health, and that often means talking to the people who are in the early days of creating a product or business. Most early-stage startups – healthcare or otherwise – have one thing in common. They need money. It takes a long time to get a healthcare business profitable, and so founders need outside funds to get an idea off the ground, complete their research, or scale up.

That brings us to this week’s guest, David Panzirer, Trustee at the Helmsley Charitable Trust. To put it in simple startup terms, David is a funder. The Helmsley Charitable Trust is an $8 billion dollar philanthropy renowned for its work funding healthcare research and innovative programs.

Of course David’s a lot more than a funder. He’s a father, for one thing, a fact that’s driven his work more than anything else. David’s also a firebrand and an instigator in an industry that often needs a little push in the right direction.

The reason for our interview, which took place at a recent health tech event, is that the Helmsley Charitable Trust has been the anchor partner for StartUp Health’s Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot, and David has been instrumental in getting that effort off the ground. He’s been part of our T1D Impact Board and has met with founders on multiple occasions to give them invaluable feedback and advice.

In this episode, we talk about the wild west of conversational AI, promising new T1D therapeutics, rural medicine, and why Helmsley has positioned itself as a high risk/high reward funder.

Let’s get into it.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? Contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Contact us to learn how you can join our Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

Gamification in Healthcare: How Two Founders Are Using Games to Heal

January 12, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsArcade Therapeutics, eddii, Farhaneh Ahmadi, Farhaneh Ahmadi PhD, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Innovation, mental health, Mental Health and Happiness, Raj Amin, T1D, T1D Moonshot, Type 1 Diabetes, Type 1 Diabetes MoonshotNicole Kinsey

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This week, we’re talking about gamification in healthcare. Gamification has been a popular buzzword in tech and in health, but it just means using elements we associate with games in non-game contexts. It means capitalizing on the motivations we find in games through things like progress updates and level-up badges to change behaviors and get us to do things that are going to be good for our health.

Today on the show, we’re talking to two founders who are gamifying the healthcare experience in two unique ways.

The first conversation is with Raj Amin, CEO & Co-founder of Arcade Therapeutics, a company that has been in the StartUp Health community since TK. They are a science-first game studio developing games that act like medicine, focusing on mental health. We’ll hear exactly what they’re building and why clinical research is key to their approach.

Then we’ll hear from Farhaneh Ahmadi, PhD, CEO & Co-founder of eddii, a company that is part of our T1D Moonshot. She and her team are using mobile gaming elements to help young people with their Type 1 diabetes management. Her company uses a character named eddii that talks to the user, tells them stories, and plays games with them – making it more relatable and more enjoyable to manage diabetes.

Listen in to learn more about these innovative approaches to improving health.

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

Want more content like this? Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Contact us to learn how you can join our Alzheimer’s Moonshot.
Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? Contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.
Looking to break down health barriers? Contact us to learn how you can join our Health Equity Moonshot.

Why the CEO of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Joined StartUp Health’s Health Moonshot Impact Board

January 4, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsADA, American Diabetes Association, Chuck Henderson, diabetes, Diabetes Moonshot, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Logan Plaster, StartUp Health, T1D, T1D Moonshot, Type 1 Diabetes, Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot, Type I DiabetesNicole Kinsey

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Since 2020, Charles “Chuck” Henderson has led the American Diabetes Association (ADA) as CEO. In 2023, he joined StartUp Health’s Health Moonshot Impact Board, a unique, multi-disciplinary group of stakeholders passionate about advancing health innovation. On the Health Moonshot Impact Board, Henderson joins top thought leaders like Dr. Toby Cosgrove (former CEO, Cleveland Clinic) and Sue Siegel (former CEO, GE Ventures).

In this StartUp Health NOW episode, StartUp Health’s Logan Plaster sat down with Henderson to learn about his priorities in leading the ADA and why it was important to him to join StartUp Health’s moonshot community.

Innovators: 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.

No More Suffering in Silence: Meet Two Founders Tackling Gut Health

December 15, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, Uncategorizedartificial intelligence, BetterMeal AI, Diet, Foursquare, Gut Health, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Innovation, Jeff Glueck, Logan Plaster, Nutrition, Nutrition & Fitness, Nutrition and Fitness, Salvo, Salvo Health, Swathi Arulguppe, Whole HealthNicole Kinsey

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On this week’s StartUp Health NOW episode, we’re talking about the future of gut health with Jeff Glueck, CEO & Co-founder of Salvo Health, and Swathi Arulguppe, CEO & Founder at BetterMeal AI.

There’s no doubt gut health is having a moment.

For a long time, health issues in the gut, like irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease, were met with outdated pamphlets about diets. The result was millions of people suffering in silence with painful, life-limiting conditions.

It’s not that GI doctors didn’t want to help. There just didn’t seem to be a lot that they could do.

Thankfully our understanding of the importance of gut health – and its connection to mental health and whole health – has resulted in a wave of innovation. And on this podcast episode, we’ll talk to some amazing entrepreneurs working to break this cycle and bring relief to patients.

Our first guest, Jeff Glueck was the CEO of Foursquare before he co-founded Salvo Health. He’s taking on gut health from two innovative angles.

The first is through the establishment of a digital clinic which makes specialty GI care available to patients at scale and on demand. Second, Glueck and his team are capitalizing on the latest research connecting gut health to mental health and other conditions. This connection between the gut microbiome and whole health is just exploding and Salvo is helping patients stay on the cutting edge.

Then we’ll check in with Swathi Arulguppe, CEO & Founder of BetterMeal AI.

You’ll hear how Arulguppe has taken her own journey with a debilitating GI condition, combined it with her passion for data, and built a platform for helping deliver AI-driven personalized meal recommendations to patients. By understanding the biological connections between human gut and food at the deepest level, she has built an app that helps guide its users on how to best manage their gut health through their nutrition.

Let’s jump in and find out where we are in gut health innovation.

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Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

10 Years Later: A Health Tech Investor Reflects on Her Early Days at StartUp Health

December 7, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsDigital Health, Funding, Health, Health Tech, investing, Irem Rami, Norwest, StartUp Health, startups, venture fundingNicole Kinsey

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Ten years ago, Irem Rami became one of the first Fellows to join StartUp Health. In her role she helped vet the very first companies to join our community. That was back when it seemed very audacious indeed to have a goal of supporting 1000 healthcare startups. A few years later and we’ve now welcomed 500 startups into the community and are still going strong. In that time Rami moved on, went to business school, and is now a principle health investor at Norwest, a $3B multi-stage fund.

We called up Rami up for this StartUp Health NOW podcast episode to give us that decade look back – you know, it’s hard to understand where you’re going if you don’t know where you came from. She’s got a unique perspective on the durability of the StartUp Health vision and what it means to chase the same seemingly impossible dream for more than 10 years.

We also wanted to hear Rami’s advice for health innovators seeking to raise funds in this difficult market. She evaluates opportunities on a daily basis and had some sage advice to share for our listeners.

Enjoy the episode.

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Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

How Two Founders Are Using AI to Tackle Wasteful Healthcare Spending

November 30, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAI, artificial intelligence, Cost to Zero, Health Cost IQ, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Healthcare, healthcare spending, Hindsait, Innovation, Jude Odu, Logan Plaster, Pinaki DasguptaNicole Kinsey

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On this StartUp Health NOW episode, we’re talking about wasteful spending in healthcare. This is one of those topics that’s hard to put in perspective. The institute of medicine says that 30% of healthcare spending could be categorized as wasteful, putting the total tab north of $750 million. It could be a trillion dollars.

Health insurance premiums are up 7% year over year, according to Health Affairs. Analysts point to inflation as a strong cause, but this nearly trillion dollars in unnecessary spending isn’t helping the equation.

Bottom line, healthcare costs are out of control and driving many people into medical bankruptcy. If 30% of healthcare spending is unnecessary, we’ve got to get this under control. Thankfully, we’ve got founders in the StartUp Health community who are passionate about this issue.

Jude Odu, CEO & Founder of Health Cost IQ, and Pinaki Dasgupta, CEO & Founder of Hindsait, will help us understand what constitutes wasteful spending and how advances in AI allow us to root it out at the source.

This is the kind of innovation that takes some courage, because pointing out to a hospital that they’re double billing or telling an insurer that they’re making massive errors doesn’t make you popular with either party. But it’s got to be done if we’re going to get overall health costs under control.

Enjoy the episode.

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Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Thriving Seniors: How These Founders Are Upgrading Senior Care from Early Disease Detection to Care Coordination

November 22, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedChristian Dansereau, Colby Takeda, Health Longevity Moonshot, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Healthy Longevity, Logan Plaster, Longevity, Pear Suite, Perceiv AI, PhD, Senior Care, SeniorsNicole Kinsey

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Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease. It’s the most common cause of dementia, impacting around 55 million people globally. It’s a leading of death for the elderly, but mortality isn’t the worst thing about Alzheimer’s disease. Before they die, this disease robs people of their minds, taking away the interests and knowledge that made them who they are. In a tragic way, it steals people’s identities.

That’s the challenge, and it’s a big one. Thankfully, there are incredible entrepreneurs and researchers working to tackle Alzheimer’s disease, and we’ve got one of them on the show this week. You’ll get to hear from Christian Dansereau, PhD, the CEO & Co-founder of Perceiv AI. Christian will share how his Canadian company – which joined the StartUp Health community in 2022 – is using decades of work in artificial intelligence to predict Alzheimer’s years earlier, so that the disease can be treated, slowed down, or even cured.

After Christian, we’ll talk to another founder passionate about helping seniors thrive as they age. Colby Takeda built Pear Suite after spending years running a senior care facility. Pear Suite – which also joined the StartUp Health community in 2022 – is a digital platform designed to empower community health workers, those front line providers and organizations that really understand the needs of the community on a block by block level. While they started with a focus on senior care, they’ve expanded their mission to new, often neglected communities, and their team is expanding as well.

Perceiv AI and Pear Suite offer two complementary takes on helping seniors living longer, healthier lives. It represents the marriage of early diagnosis, deep data, AI, and daily care, delivered by the right people, served up in actionable ways.

Listen in to learn more.

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Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Food as Medicine: The Next Wave of Tech-Enabled Nutrition

November 16, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsEdamam, Food as Medicine, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Logan Plaster, Nutrition, Nutrition & Fitness, Nutrition and Fitness, Shireen Abdullah, Victor Penev, YumlishNicole Kinsey

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At StartUp Health we’re all about what’s new and what’s next in health, and that often means talking about cutting-edge technology. But sometimes the most radical way to improve is also the simplest. One example? Our food.

This week, as we head into Thanksgiving in the United States, we’re talking about the role food plays in managing not just our weight and fitness, but actual chronic diseases. Some people use the term ‘Food as Medicine,’ and the more research we do, the more ways we find that tuning our nutrition can sometimes be superior to taking more pharmaceuticals.

While the idea of seeing food as a legitimate healthcare tool isn’t new, per se, there are some exciting new tools and platforms that leverage nutritional information and make it more accessible to the world. And that’s what we’re going to talk about on this episode.

Our first guest is Shireen Abdullah, CEO & Founder at Yumlish, who joined the StartUp Health community in 2019. Shireen’s platform puts a virtual nutritionist in your pocket, with a strong emphasis on boosting health literacy. She’s also worked very closely with the Air Force on workforce readiness. Turns out there are so many young people who are overweight and inactive that it’s hindering military recruitment and becoming a national security threat.

After Shireen we’ll hear from Victor Penev, CEO & Founder of Edamam, a Health Transformer since all the way back in 2013. Victor has made the world’s food knowledge more searchable through Edamam’s API so that users of platforms like NOOM and Virta Health can get personalized meal recommendations. We’ll also hear about their brand new integration with Open AI that brings a ChatGPT experience to the process of finding personalized meal plans.

Enjoy the episode!

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Neolth Teams Up with NBA Star Kenny Thomas to Bring Mental Health Tools to Kids

November 2, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedChildrens Health, Health Moonshot, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Katherine Grill, Kenny Thomas, Logan Plaster, mental health, Mental Health & Happiness, Mental Health and Happiness, mentalhealthawareness, NBA, Neolth, Teen HealthNicole Kinsey

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According to some estimates, out of the HHS, nearly 50% of kids have experienced some kind of mental health challenge. And not just anxiety about an upcoming test or depression over a breakup, but persistent feelings that interfere with daily activities.

Health innovation companies have been on the case for years, including many from the StartUp Health community. They’re tackling the science – like what’s the best way to treat mental health challenges in teens – and they’re also tackling engagement. You can have the best tools in the world after all, but if a young person doesn’t want to get help, it’ll never go anywhere.

Enter Katherine Grill, PhD, CEO & Co-founder of Neolth, one of our guests on this podcast episode. She’s taken her doctorate in behavioral neuroscience and her experience as a clinician, combined with hundreds of interviews with young people, in order to build a platform that meets kids where they’re at – offering self-guided mental health support in a variety of forms and flavors.

Joining the podcast with us is former pro basketball player, Kenny Thomas. After spending 11 seasons in the NBA, Thomas became an entrepreneur and community advocate, with a focus on youth experiencing financial hardship via his own foundation. And now he’s throwing his influence behind Neolth in order to help young people, particularly those involved in sports, gain access to mental health services.

On this StartUp Health NOW episode, we’ll cover the ins and outs of the Neolth platform as well as some of Dr. Grill’s strategy behind working with a brand ambassador, which is somewhat unique in the world of early-stage health startups.

Let’s get into it.

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot