Tag Archives: Health Moonshot

How Avanlee Care Is Teaming Up with Retailers to Address the Caregiver Crisis



Our podcast guest this week is Avanlee Christine, CEO and Co-founder of Avanlee Care, a company that joined StartUp Health in 2022. A few years ago Avanlee found herself helping to coordinate care for her grandmother. Everyone in the family wanted to help, but she lived far away, and there just wasn’t a good way to check in on her health and be the kind of support that Avanlee and her family wanted to be.

As many entrepreneurs do, Avanlee said to herself: There must be a better way. So She raised some funds (that’s a story in itself), built a team, and set out to design a platform that eases the burden on unpaid caregivers. And she did all while having her first child.

Listen in as she explains the details of the Avanlee Care product as it stands today and about how she’s finding eager partners in some of the country’s largest retailers and employers. Turns out easing the caregiver burden isn’t just a moral good, it’s also good for a company’s bottom line.


FundersBecome 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.

 


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



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.


FundersBecome 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.


How Health Tech Startups Can Launch with Government Contracts



So you’re healthcare founder who has designed and built, by the sweat of your brow, a new platform or product that can help people live longer, healthier lives. Now, you just need to get it into people’s hands so they can use it, give feedback, help you iterate, and ultimately scale. As every founder knows, building the product is just a first step. Getting to market is a whole other challenge.

There are lots of different approaches for go-to-market strategy – with StartUp Health’s community of nearly 500 companies we’ve seen them all. One we wanted to highlight today is the idea of pursuing partnerships with the government or military. Given the enormous number of people that fall within the care of the military and federal agencies and the funding that gets allocated for their health, this is a tempting strategy. But it’s not for the faint of heart or those short on runway.

In this week’s podcast episode we’ll talk to two people who are making this marriage of startups and government contracts work – from two different angles.

First we’ll hear from Shireen Abdullah, CEO & Founder of Yumlish (which joined StartUp Health in 2019), about how she’s working with the US Air Force to help keep recruits healthy and service ready. Turns out, poor nutrition could actually become a national security threat.

Second, we’ll hear from the other side of the table. Suzy Shirley heads up community engagement at the VA’s Pathfinder program. Pathfinder was established just recently with the express purpose of making it easier for startups to access the Veterans Health Administration, which, if you’re not familiar, is massive. The VHA is the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States, providing care at more than 1200 facilities, covering over nine million enrolled veterans. Many healthcare startups would love to work with this patient population, but traditionally the administrative barriers have been high. Suzy Shirley explains how her team is changing the paradigm. She provides some practical tips for how runway-limited startups can make meaningful headway with such a huge government institution and start piloting high-impact products.

Enjoy the episode, which was recorded at the ViVE 2023 conference in Nashville.


FundersBecome 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.


How These Entrepreneurs Are Empowering Community-Based Healthcare



Some startups provide tools directly consumers and patients while others tackle issues in the hospital, at the other end of the care journey.

Our two guests today, Dr. Scott Kaiser from Determined Health and Nick Lockett from Pear Suite, occupy a sort of middle ground. They empower communities and community-based organizations to provide better care for vulnerable people.

It doesn’t take much to see the need for more empowered communities in healthcare. Every day we see more headlines about an epidemic of loneliness and the role of social connection in health outcomes. That data is in, and it’s not good. We know from our own experience that there are health concerns you might share with a friend before turning to a doctor.

Nowhere is the need for community-based health intervention more clear than with seniors. According to our guests today, that process starts with empowering authentic, actionable communication. So they’ve built unique tools and platforms designed make that process scaleable, replicable, and easy.

Our first guest today is Scott Kaiser, MD, CEO & Co-founder of Determined Health, a company that joined StartUp Health in 2022. Dr. Kaiser, a trained geriatrician, along with this team, was recently recognized by CHIME and ScaleHealth as a finalist in their patent engagement challenge. After receiving the award in the “digital front door” category, he likened his company to being the Walmart greeter for the healthcare system.

Our next guest is Nick Lockett, CTO & Co-founder at Pear Suite. As you’ll hear, Pear Suite – also a StartUp Health company since 2022 – gives organizations the tools necessary to track community-driven care and identify social determinants of health. Their data-driven approach upgrades a life-saving process that has often been relegated to pen and paper.

Enjoy the episode, which was recorded at the ViVE 2023 conference in Nashville.


FundersBecome 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.

 


How One Founder Raised $5M to Help Women Detect Breast Cancer Earlier



On this StartUp Health NOW episode, we go to Portland, Oregon, to meet a Health Transformer helping women assess their risk for breast cancer. We chat with Kaitlin Christine, CEO & Founder of Gabbi, because she successfully raised more than $4M in 2022, at a time when many other young startups were struggling to raise. We stress with the startups in our portfolio that raising capital is just one small piece of the health moonshot journey, but there is no denying that it can give rocket fuel to a great idea, so we wanted to hear how she did it. What were the strategies and mindsets that helped her grow from a passionate solopreneur to building her first executive team and scalable product? And, what lessons could she share with other founders who find themselves facing a similar challenge?


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

InvestorsContact 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.
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.

How Brian Neman Has Cultivated an Award-Winning Workplace at Sanguine Biosciences



This week, our guest is Brian Neman, the CEO and Founder of Sanguine Biosciences, a company that joined the StartUp Health portfolio in 2018.

Brian and his team first made a splash by bringing an at-home on-demand business model to specimen collection for clinical trials. Instead of having to get yourself to a lab, you tap a few buttons on your phone and a nurse shows up at your house to take your blood. That business has evolved significantly over the years, which we’ll get into in the interview. But the spark for this interview had more to do with people than products.

You see, Brian’s company was just selected for the Forbes list of 100 Best Small Workplaces and top 10 in biopharma. Sanguine was also on Inc.’s list of fastest growing private companies, and Comparably named him on their list of best CEOs for women and for diversity in the workplace.

In this interview, Brian will talk about how he cultivates company culture, particularly in an era of remote work – and he had loads of wisdom to share, so we hope you enjoy.


Connect with the team at Sanguine Biosciences via email.

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.

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

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



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.

 


Affectifi’s ThinkHuman Platform Uses Streaming TV to Make Emotional Regulation Easy, Fun, and Accessible



Emotional regulation. It’s a fancy term for something very simple, and something we often take for granted. Emotional regulation is a person’s ability to effectively manage and respond to an emotional experience. We do this work unconsciously all day long, deciding how to respond when we’re cut off in traffic or when we see something we disagree with on social media.

How we respond to emotional situations can have massive ramifications for our lives, yet we don’t typically spend much time thinking about it or trying to improve.

Our guests this week, Melissa Cesarano and Ilya Lyashevsky, got their PhDs at Columbia University studying the science of this field, called social-emotional learning. Now, they’ve poured their academic work into a startup called Affectifi, which StartUp Health backed last year.

In this conversation, we’ll hear from Mel and Ilya about their unique methodology for teaching emotional regulation to young people. It’s a platform called ThinkHuman and it actually piggy-backs training modules on top of popular content on streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+.

Listen in to hear how it works.


Learn more and connect with the team at Affectifi.

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.

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

David Weingard Breaks Down the Mission and Vision of StartUp Health’s New T1D Moonshot



This week’s episode is a conversation with a very special guest, David Weingard. For years StartUp Health backed his work as a founder as he built up a startup called Cecelia Health that provides a combination of high-tech and high-touch care for people with diabetes. Now David is leading a new initiative here at StartUp Health, the Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot. As the Chief Impact Officer, David has brought together an all-star team of T1D advocates to further this moonshot by onboarding investors, entrepreneurs, and researchers who are building the future of health. Hear how the Type 1 Diabetes Moonshot Impact Board is breaking down silos and speeding up innovation — and how you can join the effort.


 

Entrepreneurs, are you working on a T1D solution? We want to hear from you.
Investors, want to back an impact-driven fund laser focused on T1D? Contact us.

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.


With Particle Health’s API, Troy Bannister Is Making Health Data Interoperability a Reality



A 2021 report in Bloomberg Law stated that though “Health IT pros and federal regulators dream of a healthcare system in which the flow of information happens seamlessly through a simple mouse-click, at least 70% of healthcare providers still exchange medical information by fax.”

In the world of health innovation, we know what can be unlocked when patient data can move safely and quickly from point A to point B. We know it because we saw it in the world of personal finance. Interoperable financial data empowered normal people to take charge of their finances, sending and receiving money, investing with a click of a button. It also empowered a new generation of apps like Venmo and Robin Hood.

This week we bring you a conversation with Troy Bannister, CEO and Co-founder of Particle Health, a StartUp Health portfolio company that is working to bring to healthcare the same level of data interoperability that we’ve experienced in personal finance. Their API framework is a foundation for healthcare innovators to build upon, so really we’re just at the very beginning of seeing what’s possible.

Troy explains what they’ve built, and what’s coming next in health data interoperability in this conversation with Katya Hancock, partner at StartUp Health. The chat was held in front of a live audience at the StartUp Health Festival @ ViVE in Miami Beach in March.



Learn more and connect with the team at Particle Health.

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.