Tag Archives: Health Equity Moonshot

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

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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.

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion
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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.

Prioritizing Health Equity Through Sustained Action and Equitable Innovation

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Last year StartUp Health launched a Health Equity Moonshot with the goal of creating a guiding equity framework for how we support health startups. That work has been led by our Chief Impact Officer Kaakpema “KP” Yelpaala. One of the first things KP did was to build a cross-disciplinary impact board who could help us guide our policies, and one of the first people he turned to for that task was today’s guest, Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH.

Dr. Maybank is the Chief Health Equity Officer & Senior VP at the American Medical Association. In the world of health equity, that’s a big deal because she guides critical policy decisions for an organization that numbers more than a quarter of a million healthcare professionals.

We wanted to have Dr. Maybank in for a Fireside Chat to get a candid look at the work she’s been doing at the AMA and hear her vision for the future. In the conversation, which was hosted by KP Yelpaala and held in front of a virtual audience of Health Transformers from our portfolio, Dr. Maybank draws a line between intention and outcomes and explains why more institutions need to do the hard internal work of examining inequitable structures.

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.

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

Investors: Contact us to learn how to invest in Health Moonshots
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.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

KP Yelpaala Shares the Mission & Vision Behind StartUp Health’s Health Equity Moonshot

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As our listeners will know, StartUp Health invests in what we call health moonshots. These are big, audacious health goals that guide us as we push innovative health entrepreneurs — our global army of Health Transformers — to collaborate and focus on long-term impact. We have health moonshots around curing cancer, improving women’s health, ending the opioid crisis, and we’ve recently added another focused on Type 1 diabetes.

This week, we launched a Health Equity Moonshot at the Clinton Global Initiative in order to build a framework that re-orients these inspiring problem solvers to tackle the challenge beneath the challenge, the social and systemic factors that drive health inequities. This transformative initiative will be integrated into all of StartUp Health’s other health moonshots, breaking down silos and encouraging local and global collaboration.

Leading StartUp Health’s Health Equity Moonshot is Kaakpema “KP” Yelpaala, a global health entrepreneur and long-time Health Transformer (he is the CEO & Co-founder of StartUp Health portfolio company InOn Health) who has dedicated his life to reducing health disparities. Yelpaala is an American of Ghanaian heritage and sits at the intersection of the immigrant and Black experiences in the United States.

In this StartUp Health NOW podcast episode, Yelpaala will share his vision for a Health Equity Moonshot and why it is necessary today.

Want to join this Health Equity Moonshot? If you’re an investor who believes in this vision, we want to hear from you. Are you a founder focused on breaking down health barriers for historically marginalized communities or who has been held back based on systemic bias in race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation? We want to hear from you.

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.