Tag Archives: Health Moonshot Update

How Spotlight-AQ Is Redefining Diabetes Care Through Psychosocial Precision

November 11, 2025Cardiometabolic Health Moonshot, Health, Healthcare, Innovation, Type 1 Diabetes MoonshotCardiometabolic Moonshot, diabetes, Health Moonshot Update, Health Transformers, mental health, Spotlight-AQ, T1D Moonshot, Unity StoakesNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:07 — 27.6MB)

StartUp Health community member Katharine Barnard-Kelly, PhD, CEO & Co-founder of Spotlight-AQ, joins StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes to share how her team is transforming diabetes care by giving providers a window into their patients’ real lives.

In this inspiring conversation, Dr. Barnard-Kelly explains how Spotlight-AQ’s AI-driven clinical tool helps providers deliver holistic, biopsychosocial care that improves outcomes for patients, reduces burnout for clinicians, and saves costs for health systems.

In this episode:

How Spotlight-AQ uses AI to match each patient’s real-world experience with optimal routine care
The simple, three-minute questionnaire that helps providers focus on what matters most
Why holistic care is critical for managing chronic conditions like diabetes and obesity
Lessons from Dr. Barnard-Kelly’s journey from health psychology to health tech entrepreneurship
How Spotlight-AQ achieved FDA qualification for a person-reported outcome measure in diabetes
What’s next after earning second place in the 2025 Breakthrough T1D Israel Innovation Challenge
Why being part of the StartUp Health community has been so valuable for connection and collaboration

Tune in to hear how Dr. Katharine Barnard-Kelly is building a bridge between science and clinical practice – and making biopsychosocial care the new standard for precision medicine.

Are you ready to tell YOUR story? Members of our Health Moonshot Communities are leading startups with breakthrough technology-driven solutions for the world’s biggest health challenges. Exposure in StartUp Health Media to our global audience of investors and partners – including our podcast, newsletters, magazine, and YouTube channel – is a benefit of our Health Moonshot PRO Membership. To schedule a call and see if you qualify to join and increase brand awareness through our multi-media storytelling efforts, submit our three-minute application. If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit.
» Learn more and apply today.

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A Mother on a Mission to Fix Maternal Nutrition: How Mother of Fact’s Nutrition Care Saves Mothers & Babies

November 4, 2025Business, Food as Medicine Moonshot, Health, Healthcare, Innovation, StartupsChildrens Health, Emily Sylvester, Food as Medicine, Health, health equity, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshot Update, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, maternal health, Mother of Fact, Unity Stoakes, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:46 — 27.3MB)

One-third of maternal deaths are linked to malnutrition or lack of nutrition care. StartUp Health community member Emily Sylvester, MS, RD, is determined to change that.

As CEO & Founder of Mother of Fact, Emily is building a future where every pregnant person has access to continuous, reimbursable nutrition care – embedded into women’s health workflows and culturally tailored to each family’s needs.

In this conversation with StartUp Health Co-founder Unity Stoakes, Emily shares:
• Why maternal care must shift upstream
• How Mother of Fact delivers a 2–3x ROI for clinics
• New data showing major reductions in complications
• Her founder journey after witnessing a preventable tragedy
• The role of equity in the future of maternal health

Listen to learn how wildly different nutrition care can improve outcomes for moms – and help health systems thrive.

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Enhance-d: Empowering Everybody Living with Diabetes to Reach Their Exercise Goals

October 24, 2025Business, Cardiometabolic Health Moonshot, Health, Healthcare, Innovation, Startups, Type 1 Diabetes MoonshotDigital Health, Entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, Health, health innovation, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshot Communities, Health Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Healthcare, Innovation, Sam Scott, T1D, T1D Moonshot, Type 1 Diabetes, Unity StoakesNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:00 — 27.5MB)

This week on the StartUp Health NOW podcast, we sit down with Sam Scott, PhD, CEO & Co-founder of Enhance-d, a Switzerland-based company transforming how people with diabetes approach exercise.

Sam shares how his experience working with professional athletes living with Type 1 diabetes inspired a digital coaching platform that integrates CGM and wearable data to personalize workouts and improve glucose control. He also talks about the company’s new clinical pilots with Dexcom, its growing global community of users, and the next generation of AI-powered coaching tools.

Listen in to learn how Enhance-d is helping people with diabetes turn movement into medicine – and why collaboration across sports tech, med tech, and clinical care will shape the future of active diabetes management.

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Why We Opened the StartUp Health Network to the Ecosystem

September 5, 2025Business, Health, Healthcare, Innovation, StartupsHealth Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, Logan Plaster, StartUp Health, StartUp Health Network, Unity StoakesNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:10 — 34.9MB)

An insider interview with StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stoakes on our new membership that invites the world’s leading investors, buyers, industry experts, and policymakers to our exclusive member community dedicated to health innovation and achieving health moonshots.

We flipped the script. In this special episode of StartUp Health NOW, our regular host Unity Stoakes sits in the guest chair while Logan Plaster leads the interview. Unity shares why StartUp Health is opening the StartUp Health Network to a broader community of investors, buyers, and industry leaders, and how a curated, 24/7 platform helps builders connect with the people who can help them scale.

The conversation gets personal and practical. Unity explains his “5 to 80 rule” for communicating ideas that resonate across ages, plus a story about bringing kids into professional spaces to remind us who we serve. You will hear how our online community ties together Health Moonshot groups like brain health, women’s health, diabetes, access to care, and longevity, and why a vetted, niche network can cut through the noise of generic platforms.

Unity also breaks down how the membership model removes friction for both founders and the wider ecosystem. For industry and ecosystem members, the StartUp Health Network is a vetted, paid membership that acts as a smart filter, with simple, inexpensive monthly or annual dues. Members get 24/7 access to the online community, curated intros to founders across Health Moonshots, private roundtables and fireside chats with industry leaders, real-time trend discussions, and VIP access to meetups at major gatherings like JP Morgan, HLTH, and ViVE. Investors can compare notes and share deal flow in a trusted forum. Buyers and operators can scout solutions faster, pressure test needs with peers, and shorten the path from first meeting to pilot. Founders continue to have dedicated membership plans with peer circles, weekly office hours, and a robust perks platform that can deliver meaningful savings on tools and services. Unity explains why the membership model removes friction by eliminating equity and complex legal lift, making it simple to participate whether you are pre-seed or scaling globally.

What is the StartUp Health Network?
A private global community for visionary decision makers, thought leaders, funders, and innovators transforming the future of health. If you are a healthcare executive, operator, investor, or industry stakeholder who wants to stay connected to the people and ideas driving what is next, this is your place to collaborate with:

Healthcare executives and operators – leaders inside health systems, payers, and pharma who are shaping the future of care delivery
Investors – venture firms, strategics, angels, and family offices backing transformative ideas
Mission-driven stakeholders – clinicians, researchers, policy makers, educators, nonprofit leaders, technologists, and ecosystem builders across the health landscape
Founders and entrepreneurs – the backbone of our community, building breakthroughs in digital health, biotech, medtech, and life sciences, with dedicated membership plans designed for entrepreneurs

Stay to the end for a VIP thank you that unlocks a special rate on Network membership. You can use the code LOGAN at checkout for a VIP rate on an annual StartUp Health Network membership.

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Supercharging Alzheimer’s Research: Gates Ventures Backs a Million-Dollar AI Initiative

August 22, 2025Alzheimer's Moonshot, Health, Healthcare, InnovationAD Data Initiative, ADDF, agentic AI, AI, Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative, Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, Alzheimer's Insights AI Prize, Alzheimer's Moonshot, artificial intelligence, Dr Gregory Moore, Gates Ventures, Gregory Moore, Health Moonshot Update, Unity StoakesNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:14 — 26.8MB)

Unlocking Innovation: The Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize and Its Impact on Healthcare

There are currently more than 55 million people worldwide living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Recent breakthroughs in new treatments and diagnostics provide hope, but there is potential to accelerate the pace of discovery and development.

Last year, StartUp Health, in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation’s (ADDF) Diagnostics Accelerator (DxA) and Gates Ventures, the private office of Bill Gates, launched the Alzheimer’s Moonshot. This initiative breaks down silos and fosters meaningful collaboration between mission-aligned founders, funders, and partners, accelerating progress in preventing, managing, and curing Alzheimer’s and related dementias through the support of entrepreneurial innovation.

Now, the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative) is backing visionary AI solutions to accelerate Alzheimer’s research with the launch of a new million-dollar prize competition. The goal is to leverage agentic AI – AI that can plan, reason, and act autonomously – to help drive breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias research.

Gregory Moore, MD, PhD, senior advisor to Gates Ventures and the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative, sat down with us to share how you can join the competition to harness AI to radically accelerate Alzheimer’s disease research. The Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize offers $1M to the winner for the agentic AI solution that can generate a powerful leap in the pace, scale, and reach of ADRD research.

Drawing from his unique background in both engineering and medicine, Dr. Moore discusses how AI could dramatically accelerate drug discovery and clinical trials by up to 50%. The initiative aims to break down traditional research barriers by harmonizing diverse data sets, from genomics to neuroimaging, making breakthroughs more accessible to the global scientific community.

The Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize competition semi-finalist teams will be selected to present at a pitch event alongside the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD) Conference in San Diego this December, where innovators worldwide will present their ideas to a distinguished panel of judges from tech, academia, and venture capital. From there, up to three finalist teams will be invited to a final event at the AD/PD International Conference next March in Copenhagen, Denmark. With travel support available for participants, this initiative ensures global accessibility and collaboration.

Ready to learn how AI could revolutionize brain health research to potentially detect Alzheimer’s earlier, improve treatments, and work toward prevention and cures? Listen to this inspiring episode that bridges technology and medicine in the fight against dementia. Then visit Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize to learn more and apply by September 12, 2025.

Do you want to participate in live conversations with industry luminaries? Members of our Health Moonshot Communities are leading startups with breakthrough technology-driven solutions for the world’s biggest health challenges. Fireside Chats, Expert Office Hours, and Peer Circles are benefits of our Health Moonshot Community Membership. To get involved, submit our three-minute application. If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit.
» Learn more and apply today.

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Insulin Delivery Innovation: These Founders Offer Solutions for Better T1D Management

November 15, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, Type 1 Diabetes MoonshotBill Ervin, Bulsai, Cardiometabolic Health, Cardiometabolic Moonshot, diabetes, Diabetes Moonshot, GO-Pen, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshot Communities, Health Moonshot Update, Logan Plaster, Ole Kjerkegaard Nielsen, Ole Nielsen, T1D, T1D Moonshot, Type 1 Diabetes, Type 1 Diabetes MoonshotNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (33.2MB)

Hope and Progress in Type 1 Diabetes Management

In honor of World Diabetes Day earlier this week, this podcast episode celebrates the strength of our T1D Moonshot Community and explores innovative solutions for better insulin delivery management.

This episode features inspiring conversations with:

Ole Kjerkegaard Nielsen, PhD, CEO & Co-founder of GO-Pen: Making insulin pens more affordable and accessible
Bill Ervin, CEO & Founder of Bulsai: Revolutionizing injection techniques for optimized results

Discover how these groundbreaking ventures are:

Empowering patients with better tools and technology
Addressing key frustrations in current diabetes management

Plus, learn about StartUp Health’s Health Moonshot Communities, like the T1D Moonshot Community, and how they connect founders tackling the biggest health challenges, such as Type 1 diabetes.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone impacted by Type 1 diabetes, healthcare professionals, and innovators passionate about improving patient lives.

Listen now and join the movement for a brighter future!

Are you ready to tell your story? Members of our Health Moonshot Communities are leading startups with breakthrough technology-driven solutions for the world’s biggest health challenges. Exposure in StartUp Health Media to our global audience of investors and partners – including our podcast, newsletters, magazine, and YouTube channel – is a benefit of StartUp Health’s PRO Membership. To schedule a call and see if you qualify to join and increase brand awareness through our multi-media storytelling efforts, submit our three-minute application. If you’re mission-driven, collaborative, and ready to contribute as much as you gain, you might be the perfect fit. Learn more and apply today.

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

Qura’s Tiny Implantables Could Revolutionize How We Treat Hypertension

February 16, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsCure Disease, Dr. Hendren, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshot Update, Health Tech, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Implantables, Innovation, Logan Plaster, Qura, Will HendrenNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.2MB)

When it comes to health technology, often the next big thing is really, really small.

Our guest on the show this week, Dr. Will Hendren, has seen personally that when it comes to implanting a medical device in the body, size matters.

Dr. Hendren spent decades as a surgeon working with rescue devices like pacemakers, which themselves have evolved from being the size of a pack of cigarettes to being smaller than a triple A battery. It doesn’t take a degree in biomechanical engineering to appreciate that you want a lower profile machine sitting next to your heart.

Now, with his company Qura – a member of the StartUp Health community since 2016 – Dr. Hendren is taking that concept to the next level. He and his team are the leading edge of miniaturizing medical devices to such an extreme degree that it opens up a whole new market for remote patient monitoring.

In our interview we’ll talk about how Dr. Hendren and his team have built an implantable the size of a vitamin that can take blood pressure readings passively and transmit that information to the patient and their caregiver wirelessly. We’ll talk about some of the tiny tech that it was necessary to invent in order to make this breakthrough possible, and we’ll talk about how remote monitoring at scale could be a gamechanger for hypertension and heart disease, which are two of the top causes of death globally.

Let’s get into it!

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

(Re)Meet Pelago: Well-Funded Quit Genius Rebrands to Make Addiction Treatment More Accessible

June 15, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAddiction, Dr Yusuf Sherwani, end addiction, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshot Update, Logan Plaster, moonshot, Pelago, Quit Genius, Yusuf Sherwani MDNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:27 — 39.1MB)

When we first met today’s StartUp Heatlh NOW podcast guest, he was a newly-minted doctorpreneur. After finishing med school Yusuf Sherwani, MD, teamed up with a couple fellow doctors to tackle a massive, pervasive problem they were facing in their clinics: Day after day they were seeing patients struggling with addiction, whether smoking or drinking or opioids. These were people stigmatized by their addictions into fear and inaction or they’d reached out for help and found the options unsuccessful.

This group of physicians thought, with today’s technology and breakthroughs in addiction management, there has to be a better way. So they built Quit Genius, the world’s first virtual clinic for substance use management. They combined the best digital health tools with leading cognitive behavioral therapy and medication assisted treatment.

Their solution met a hungry market. Since inception, Dr. Sherwani and his team – who joined StartUp Health in 2020 – have helped more than 750,000 people manage their substance use, and with $77 million raised, they are poised to scale even further.

We wanted to sit down with Dr. Sherwani to hear their scale-up vision and also to get the story behind their recent rebrand to Pelago. In this episode, Dr. Sherwani explains the name change – it’s derived from the word archipelago – and shares where this growing company is heading next.

Founders: 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.

Expanding Globally: How This African Startup Is Building a Roadmap for the US Market

March 10, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAugmental Technolgies, Health Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Logan Plaster, Moonshots, StartUp Health NowNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:43 — 22.6MB)

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

One of our favorite things about the StartUp Health community of nearly 500 companies and upwards of a 1000 entrepreneurs is how global it is. It is so easy to get caught up in your local challenges and your standard ways of doing business and forget that there is this global village of entrepreneurs, many of whom are thinking in wonderfully different and creative ways about the same challenges you’re facing. We need each other, and we need to build strong lines of communication.

One way that we see cross-border innovation is when a startup attempts to break into a new global market. On this podcast episode, we’re bringing you one such story, a snapshot of a startup working to expand from South Africa to the United States. The conversation is with Herman Lintvelt
and Michael (Fox) van der Linde, the founders of Augmental Technologies, a StartUp Health portfolio company providing digital coaching and content that supports families with children who have ADHD, autism, Tourette syndrome, and other neurodivergent conditions.

We wanted to learn some of the practical ways they’re adapting to a new market environment. Like, are they setting up a physical office in the United States or going all virtual? How are they handling marketing and branding? How did they locate collaboration partners?

And we also wanted to hear what they’re bringing with them that’s unique to South African entrepreneurs. We need a diversity of perspectives – different styles of ingenuity – in order to break out of the intractable problems we experience in health. Entrepreneurs from resource-constrained environments have to solve business challenges with their own blend of creativity and pragmatism. As Augmental Tech brings their platform from South Africa to the United States, they’re bringing that ingenuity with them, and using it to build a market advantage.

In our chat they offered us a slice of life of a startup in the midst of international expansion and share a number of helpful nuggets of wisdom that’ll be useful to entrepreneurs at any stage of growth. Enjoy!

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.

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

Everyplace Labs Validates Self-Service Diagnostic Testing Kiosk

February 22, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Covid, Covid 19, Health Moonshot Update, Health Transformer, Logan Plaster, Pandemic, Pandemic ResponseNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:12 — 21.3MB)

Here are two things we learned as a society from the COVID-19 pandemic: one is that knowledge is power, and a quick diagnostic test can help us understand our risk of spreading a virus to others; the second is we also learned that testing technology means nothing if it’s not accessible. If you have to schedule an appointment to get tested three days after symptoms start and then you wait another three days for results, the whole system grinds to a halt. Accurate tests aren’t enough. We also have to get them into the right hands at the right time.

That’s where today’s guests come in. Michael Tu and Claire Zhou are the co-founders of Everyplace Labs, which StartUp Health backed in 2021. As the name suggests, Everyplace Labs is designing a way to make diagnostic testing – whether for COVID or anything else – available just about anywhere. They’ve built a kiosk – essentially a diagnostic testing vending machine that can walk a patient through the administration of a test, and then process the results right there in the machine. The product, really a first of its kind, is being piloted at large manufacturers, where workers can have a very hard time accessing healthcare resources, but it really has implications for any community lacking access to basic diagnostic testing.

In our conversation we’ll get into their recent pilot, learn how the machine works, and hear what comes next for broader commercialization.

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Join us in Miami Beach from March 6-9 for StartUp Health @ ViVE 2022 to meet dozens of Health Transformers: startuphealth.com/vive

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Connect with the team at Everyplace Labs.

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

Investors: How to invest in StartUp Health Moonshots healthmoonshots.com
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