Tag Archives: Access to care

Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Toby Cosgrove Sees Moonshot Potential in an After-COVID World



While this may be the first global pandemic Toby Cosgrove, MD, has experienced, he’s seen a lot in his nearly 50-year career. The Executive Advisor and former CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic is also a former heart surgeon, a Vietnam War veteran, and now a member of the StartUp Health board of advisors and our Health Moonshot Impact Force. As Dr. Cosgrove sees it, COVID-19 has shifted the national healthcare puzzle to reveal its missing pieces, creating new openings for improvement and innovation. These include new delivery systems for healthcare, greater collaboration, better use of data, and accelerated innovation. In a recent conversation with the StartUp Health community led by Steven Krein and Unity Stoakes, Dr. Cosgrove shared his thoughts on our current moment and what comes next.

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A Moonshot Vision for Healthcare Virtual Reality With Dr. Brennan Spiegel



Dispense with everything you know about virtual reality. So says Dr. Brennan Spiegel at the opening of his new book, VRx: How Virtual Therapeutics will Revolutionize Medicine. Dr. Spiegel, our guest on this episode of StartUp Health TV, directs the Center for Outcomes Research and Education at Cedar Sinai Hospital in L.A. He’s one of the most influential and forward-thinking figures in health innovation today. The conversation went deep into the potential for virtual reality to transform therapeutic care, well beyond what many people see as possible.

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The Surprising Secret to Doctor.com’s Success



Andrei Zimiles and Reed Mollins, founders of Doctor.com, are longtime friends and longtime friends of StartUp Health. The two met as pre-teens at summer camp and led parallel lives before becoming partners and entrepreneurs, dropping out of high school at age 16 and transferring out of and into the very same colleges. And just as their friendship has been something of a journey, so, too, has their professional relationship, from Doctor.com’s origins at rented desks in a dusty Soho co-working space (the two vividly recall a garbage bag duct-taped over a broken window) to its acquisition this past fall by Press Ganey.

Zimiles and Mollins joined StartUp Health back in 2013 and returned to share their hard-won wisdom at a recent Fireside Chat. In a wide-ranging conversation amongst friends, the duo explained how their attitude towards sales and approach to building partnerships took Doctor.com from its humble beginnings to its lucrative exit.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com
Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com

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.


Walmart Could Magnify Americans’ Access to Healthcare — With the Help of Key Startups



In the era of social distancing, a doctor’s appointment looks a little different than it did a year ago. But Evan Schnur, Director of Healthcare Information and Strategy at Walmart, says the experience will continue to evolve, even after in-person visits resume. Schnur trained as a pharmacist and currently leads the development of the growing range of healthcare services at Walmart Health, which now include primary care visits, diagnostics, and dentistry. The massive scale of the world’s largest company by revenue offers new avenues for prevention and treatment that could shatter the paradigm for medical care. In a recent StartUp Health Fireside Chat, Schnur explained what that future might look like and why healthcare startups might play a key role.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com
Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com

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.


Particle Health’s “Quark” Sandbox Gives Healthcare Companies Secure Access to Their Medical Data



In this podcast episode, CEO and Co-founder Troy Bannister reveals what his Brooklyn-based startup has been working on for the last 2+ years. And now, with Quark, their new HIPAA-compliant platform that converts EMR data into an easily digestible format, health tech app developers can play around with Particle’s API that makes patient data instantly and securely available. Bannister also explains why, because of shifting patient data regulations, the time is now to innovate and destroy the fax machine for good.

Connect with Troy and his team at Particle Health here.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com
Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com

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.


Conversa Health Built on Its Virtual Care Platform to Quickly Launch COVID-19 Screening Tools for Frontline Workers




Brand Newland Is Fighting Opioid Overprescribing by Improving and Standardizing the Surgery Experience



Established with the goal of improving recovery time and bettering outcomes for patients undergoing surgical procedures, the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols have revolutionized that experience. Unfortunately, variations in surgical practices do not allow every patient to benefit. Brand Newland, CEO and Co-founder of Goldfinch Health, hopes to change that. Through Goldfinch, Newland is making sure that employers are able to provide their patients with the best surgery options available; An opportunity for patients to recover faster, employers pay less in sick leave, insurance companies pay for fewer complications and setbacks. Finally, and perhaps most importantly at this moment in history, faster recovery times mean less reliance on opioids. And Newland sees his work at Goldfinch as a critical upstream component to fighting the opioid crisis.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health startuphealth.com
Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com

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.


inHealth CEO Harry Kim on Why Lifestyle Therapeutics Are the Next Frontier in Health




Our Powers Combined



After a meeting at a StartUp Health event years ago and recognizing a kindred mindset in the other, two CEOs from our portfolio, Jim Iversen of Sen-Jam Pharmaceutical and Anupam Khandelwal of Sagesurfer, decided to join forces and develop a digital therapeutics app, which just hit the app store, to help patients track their MS-related symptoms for personal awareness purposes.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health https://www.startuphealth.com/
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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.


Pregnancy in the Time of COVID, With ROBYN Founder Alli Kasirer



Today’s podcast is a throwback to one of our favorite interviews from 2020 thus far. Back in early May, we linked up with Alli Kasirer, CEO of a company called Robyn, for an interview on StartUp Health TV. Robyn – online at we are robyn.co – is a digital health company that acts as a 21st century guide for aspiring, expecting and new parents. They cover everything from fertility coaching to infant sleep training, with a modern, tech-forward sensibility. When COVID hit, demand for virtual services for expectant and new parents skyrocketed, and Kasirer and her team stepped up to the challenge. If you want to watch the full conversation, you’ll find it on the Startup Health YouTube channel, at youtube.com/startuphealth.

Entrepreneurs: How to get investment from StartUp Health https://www.startuphealth.com/
Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots http://www.healthmoonshots.com

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.