Tag Archives: Health Moonshot Update

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!

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(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.

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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!

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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.

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At Particle Health, Troy Bannister Is Bringing the Best of FinTech to Healthcare

February 15, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, StartupsCost to Zero, Health Moonshot Update, Health Transformer, Logan Plaster, Pandemic Response, particle health, troy bannisterNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:02 — 22.9MB)

Meet Troy Bannister and the Particle Health team when you join us in Miami Beach in March for StartUp Health @ ViVE 2022: startuphealth.com/vive

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It’s no secret that healthcare as an industry has lagged behind most industries when it comes to tech adoption. We can search and buy plane tickets on our phones, get a same-day delivery of toothpaste with a click of a button, but medical records often still need to be faxed in paper form from one hospital to another.

Your response might be that’s OK since healthcare is a lot more complicated, and data security is a bigger deal when it comes to health than it is in travel and retail. However, consider Exhibit B: Digital personal finance. Today, people deposit checks, send money, even invest in the stock market, with a click on their phones, in spite of the very sensitive nature of the data involved.

I say all of this because my guest on the show today, Troy Bannister, is bringing the best of finance tech and bringing it to the healthcare industry. Troy is the CEO and Co-founder of Particle Health, which StartUp Health backed in 2018, and he’s on a mission to kill the fax machine and make the essential exchange of health data as easy as Venmo, Mint, or RobinHood. Particle Health is doing this through a clever API approach that helps developers build new, exciting apps.

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

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Learn more and connect with the team at Particle Health.

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

How Nightingale Is Redefining Preventative Health

February 8, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, Startups, UncategorizedAI, Blood Testing, Cure Disease, diabetes, Finland, Health Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, Health Tech, Heart Disease, Logan Plaster, Longevity, Moonshots, Nightingale, Teemu Suna, TelehealthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:50 — 36.5MB)

Join us in Miami Beach in March for StartUp Health @ ViVE 2022: startuphealth.com/vive

Nightingale Health, a Finnish company that StartUp Health backed in 2016, uses a new kind of blood testing to predict future disease risk so that people can change the course of their health before it’s too late. They’ve designed a way to analyze blood samples that pulls 250 times more data from that sample than a typical test. They use artificial intelligence and machine learning to correlate that data with future disease risk, like diabetes and heart disease. Then they put the result in simple terms so that patients can see trends and take action.

This year, Nightingale took three big strides forward. They went public on the Finnish Nasdaq, which gave them capital to scale globally. They rolled out at-home testing kits so more people can benefit from Nightingale’s disease prediction. And they acquired a genomics company that will allow them to bake genetic information into their app and provide people with even more personalized health assessments.

We sat down with Nightingale CEO and Co-founder Teemu Suna to hear more about their blood testing technology and how it could change preventative health globally by getting patients to see their potential future and then change the course of their health.

Join us in Miami Beach in March at StartUp Health @ ViVE 2022 to meet Health Transformers: startuphealth.com/vive

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Learn more and connect with the team at Nightingale.

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

Responsum Health’s Latest App Puts Long-COVID Front and Center

January 10, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, Startups, UncategorizedAccess to care, coronavirus, Covid, Covid 19, COVID19, Cure Disease, Health Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, Logan Plaster, Pandemic Response, Responsum HealthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:14 — 19.5MB)

Our guest today is Andrew Rosenberg, CEO and Founder of Responsum Health, which StartUp Health backed in 2019. At Responsum, Rosenberg and his team have created disease-specific apps that bring together curated information and news about that disease as well as a professionally-moderated community chat, so patients can connect and learn in a safe environment. Their recent app developed around Long-COVID has exploded with activity, so we sat down with Rosenberg to hear what he’s learning from this community of patients.

Join us in Miami Beach in March at StartUp Health @ ViVE 2022 and meet Andrew Rosenberg and other Health Transformers: startuphealth.com/vive

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

Reversing Diabetes With Sami Inkinen of Virta Health

January 4, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, StartupsCure Disease, diabetes, Health Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, Logan Plaster, Moonshots, Sami Inkinen, Type 2 Diabetes, Type II Diabetes, Virta, Virta HealthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:58 — 50.8MB)

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

The numbers surrounding Type 2 diabetes are staggering. The WHO puts the number north of 400 million people globally, and it’s just getting worse. Health experts agree that Type 2 diabetes can largely be managed by a combination of nutrition, exercise, and medication. But what if it could be reversed completely? That’s the claim, and the health moonshot, of our guest today, Sami Inkinen, CEO and Founder of Virta, which StartUp Health backed in 2020. Specifically, Inkinen and his team want to reverse Type 2 diabetes in 100 million people by 2025.

Before Virta, Inkinen disrupted the real estate industry by co-founding Trulia, which he sold to Zillow for $2.5B. Now with Virta, he’s raised more than $350M to date, giving him the capital needed to take a great idea and scale it in unprecedented ways.

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

For Ironman Athlete David Weingard, a Diabetes Diagnosis Was a Spark for Innovation

November 30, 2021Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, Startups, UncategorizedAccess to care, Cecelia Health, Cure Disease, David Weingard, diabetes, Health Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, Logan Plaster, Startup, StartUp HealthStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:42 — 50.4MB)

Join us in Miami Beach from March 6-9, 2022, for StartUp Health @ ViVE to meet the Cecelia Health team and other Health Transformers: startuphealth.com/vive

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Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn’t been impacted by diabetes in some way. Globally, half a billion people are affected by the disease, and it was responsible for the deaths of 1.5M people globally in 2019. As frightening as those numbers are, there is also great hope to be found today in the entrepreneurs and innovations changing how we manage diabetes. To understand both sides of this coin – the very personal toll of diabetes plus the present and future promise of health technology – we talked to David Weingard, founder of Cecelia Health, which helps diabetics get the specialized health coaching they need. More importantly, David is a type 1 diabetic who has fought for his own life and knows the daily fears and challenges that this silent disease brings to millions. It’s that combination of experience that makes David’s journey so powerful.

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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.
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youturn’s Shay Houser Is Making Addiction Treatment More Accessible

November 8, 2021Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, Startups, UncategorizedAddiction, end addiction, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshot Update, Health Moonshots, Logan Plaster, Shay Houser, youturnStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:17 — 24.1MB)

On this podcast episode, which was recorded live on the floor of HLTH in Boston in October, StartUp Health’s Logan Plaster sits down with Shay Houser, the CEO and Co-founder of youturn. Shay and his team are working to fight addiction by making addiction treatment resources more accessible. They’ve recognized that it isn’t just the addicted person who is effected, but a wide community of friends and family, so they’re working with employers to address problems early and to respond to addiction as a community of support. Shay comes at youturn as both a serial entrepreneur and as someone who has struggled with addiction. That combination of tactical and personal experience has helped the startup secure important early partnerships, which Shay discusses in the interview.

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