Tag Archives: Health Transformers

From the Archives: Naheed Kurji of Recursion Takes a Deep Dive into Artificial Intelligence for Drug Discovery

August 30, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAI, artificial intelligence, Cost to Zero, Cure Disease, Cyclica, Health Transformers, Logan Plaster, machine learning, Moonshots, Naheed Kurji, Recursion, Recursion Canada, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, RXRXNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:57 — 28.0MB)

For this StartUp Health NOW episode, we dive back into an interview we did with a long-time Health Transformer, Naheed Kurji. At the time of the interview, Naheed was the CEO, President & Co-founder of Cyclica, a StartUp Health company that is considered one of the pioneers of what is now the increasingly hot space of using AI for drug discovery and development.

We wanted to revisit this conversation because in the time since we aired it, Cyclica had huge news. In May 2023, the company was acquired by Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RXRX), a clinical-stage biotech player.

Naheed now leads Recursion’s Canadian operations and is putting his experience to use accelerating innovation in drug discovery in whole new ways. By looking back at Naheed’s experience at Cyclica, we can gain a glimpse into how he was so successful piloting a startup from launch to acquisition and how he might lead Recursion moving forward. Naheed will also give us an inside look at how Cyclica reshaped this market – then he’ll zoom way out: as the chair of the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Health, Naheed can help us understand where the AI for health industry is going.

We will be back with fresh episodes after Labor Day!

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From the Archives: Dr. Robert Wilson on How Partnering with PreventScripts Enhanced His Medical Practice

August 9, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Brandi Harless, chronic care, Cost to Zero, CovenantCare, CovenantCare Family Practice, Cure Disease, diabetes, Digital Health, Dr. Natalie Davis, Dr. Robert Wilson, health innovation, Health Moonshots, health transformation, Health Transformers, Logan Plaster, md, Natalie Davis, PreventScripts, Robert Wilson, Type 2 Diabetes, Type II DiabetesNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:56 — 17.6MB)

Typically on this show we talk to the health tech founders – who we call Health Transformers – that are creating the tools and platforms that will modernize our health system. Or we talk to top investors on what they’re looking for in startups.

But, on this week’s StartUp Health NOW, we look back at one of our most-popular podcast episodes, which featured a different kind of guest: one that helps round out the picture of how healthcare innovation goes from idea to real-world implementation.

Robert Wilson, MD, is a family physician who runs CovenantCare Family Practice, a multi-site medical practice in Tennessee. Dr. Wilson popped up on our radar because he was an early partner for PreventScripts, a startup that’s part of the StartUp Health community. PreventScripts, led by Brandi Harless and Natalie Davis, MD, has created a platform that helps family doctors like Dr. Wilson identify patients who would benefit from chronic care management. Think about a patient who is pre-diabetic and all signs point towards a long battle with Type 2 diabetes. While Dr. Wilson might be too overextended to identify and coach this patient before the disease sets in, PreventScripts can identify the risk and put the patient on a clinically-proven program. Patients with chronic diseases, or the risk of disease, get heightened care between visits, and Dr. Wilson gets added reimbursement.

We wanted to talk to Dr. Wilson to understand why he was interested in partnering with a health startup, as this is one of the key hurdles for any health innovator. How do you find the right clinical partner, a place to prove out your brilliant idea in the real world, and then iterate based on user feedback?

In the conversation – our most-downloaded episode in the past year – we’ll get into the real-world challenges that Dr. Wilson faces, his motivation for evolving his practice, and how PreventScripts has helped him fill gaps in patient care.

We will be back with fresh episodes after Labor Day!

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

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

July 14, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedAccess to care, Access to Care Moonshot, Avanlee Care, Avanlee Christine, Caregiver, Caregiving, Digital Health, Entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, health innovation, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Healthcare, Healthy Longevity, Innovation, Logan Plaster, LongevityNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:45 — 21.4MB)

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.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

How Health Tech Startups Can Launch with Government Contracts

June 9, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Digital Health, health innovation, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Tech, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Innovation, Logan Plaster, Nutrition, Nutrition and Fitness, Shireen Abdullah, Suzy Shirley, VA, Veteran Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, VHA, YumlishNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:36 — 18.9MB)

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.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

How These FemTech Founders Are Upgrading Below-the-Belt Health

June 2, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedHealth Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Innovation, Moonshots, MUTU, MUTU System, Planet MUTU, Renalis, Renalis Health, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:54 — 21.0MB)

For years we’ve tracked investment trends at StartUp Health and talked quarter after quarter about how women’s health has been underfunded. Finally, that is changing, and more founders and more funders are actively bridging that divide, creating new, necessary solutions for women, whether in fitness, pre- and post-natal care, chronic conditions, fertility, or menopause.

Our podcast guests this week are two Health Transformers who have been dedicated to FemTech before the new surge in interest in women’s health innovation.

First we’ll talk to Wendy Powell, CEO & Founder of MUTU System, a UK-based fitness platform that helps women recover from pregnancy and regain independence and confidence – focusing on core and pelvic floor reconnection, recovery, and strengthening. Wendy’s been in business for more than a decade and joined StartUp Health last year to help expand her reach.

Then we’ll hear from Missy Lavender, CEO & Founder of Renalis, about how she’s helping women with below-the-belt conditions like overactive bladder get the care they need through an AI chatbot called CeCe. Missy’s company – which joined StartUp Health in 2019 – is bringing therapy to women who have suffered in silence with pelvic health conditions. She’s not just extending a lifeline to women, but to their doctors as well, who have struggled to figure out how to manage these challenging conditions.

Enjoy the episode, which was recorded at the ViVE 2023 conference in Nashville, with these two founders breaking through the stigma around women’s pelvic health.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

How These Entrepreneurs Are Empowering Community-Based Healthcare

May 25, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Determined Health, Digital Health, health innovation, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Healthy Longevity, Innovation, Logan Plaster, Loneliness, Longevity, Pear Suite, Senior Care, SeniorsNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:10 — 20.3MB)

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.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Safer, Faster, Smarter: How Entrepreneurs Are Upgrading Hospital Tech

May 19, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Cost to Zero, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Logan Plaster, Mocingbird, Moonshots, Vigilant SoftwareNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:16 — 20.4MB)

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

So when you go to the hospital for care, you accept that the outcome isn’t completely under your or your doctor’s control. Even with textbook healthcare, bad things can happen for a variety of reasons and your health can decline. Put another way, it’s hard enough when good care results in a bad outcome. But what about when a preventable error occurs?

It can seem incomprehensible, bewildering.

This idea that mistakes can happen in the hospital – mistakes that can take an already tenuous situation and make it even worse – and yet to err is human and hospitals are full of humans, so mistakes happen.

Thankfully, there are brilliant people out in the world working to reduce these preventable hospital errors in creative ways like our first guest on today’s show: Fox Holt, CEO of Vigilant. This startup – which joined StartUp Health in 2022 – is digitizing medication tracking by doing away with handwritten medication notes.

No more scribbling instructions on the side of an IV bag or, worse, on a syringe. With Vigilant’s easy-to-launch system, nurses can immediately start labeling and tracking meds in automated ways. This ensures patients get the right dose every time and no preventable medication errors occur. As a bonus, hospitals reap the benefits of all that medication data on the back end, data they were missing with handwritten labels.

Our second guest is also streamlining operations in the hospital, but with more of a mind towards provider satisfaction versus direct patient safety. Although it’s easy to see where the two intersect downstream.

Sanji Silva is the Chief Product Officer & Chief Technology Officer at Mocingbird, a startup upgrading and streamlining the provider credentialing process.

If Mocingbird – which joined StartUp Health in 2020 – has their way, gone will be the days lost to credentialing paperwork and hospitals having to scramble to find qualified workers as these standards shift from state to state. It will all be one unified system that keeps providers up to date with continuing education and keeps hospitals fully staffed.

It’s not just about paperwork, as onerous credentialing processes lead to burnout which push providers out of the profession entirely, leading to poorer quality care due to fewer available physicians.

Listen in to this week’s podcast to hear these vastly different approaches with one goal: improving healthcare.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Creative Collaborations: Bringing Next-Gen Alzheimer’s Tech to West Africa

May 12, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedAccess to care, Alzheimer's, Brain health, BrainScanology, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Healthy Longevity, Innovarx, Logan PlasterNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:45 — 22.7MB)

One of the words that gets thrown around so much at StartUp Health that you might get tired of hearing it is ‘collaboration.’ We say it a lot. However, you’ll only get sick of the word if you think it’s just startup jargon or lip service. But at StartUp Health that’s just not the case.

StartUp Health was designed from day one to promote a collaborative ecosystem in health innovation. For more than a decade we’ve been bringing like-minded founders together to learn from each other and support each other. It can be lonely out there as a founder, and StartUp Health has made it a top priority to connect people in meaningful ways. So that companies can grow faster, yes. But also so that founders survive and thrive in the face of the day-to-day grind of entrepreneurship.

We say all of that because it explains why our StartUp Health NOW guests today resonate so much for our team. David Nguyen, PhD, CEO & Co-founder of BrainScanology, and Ismail Badjie, PharmD, CEO & Founder of Innovarx Global Health, are from two very different health sectors – and two very different regions of the world. But they met at a StartUp Health event. And because they were fellow Health Transformers they knew they shared certain values. That prompted a connection and a conversation, which then allowed them to leapfrog into a business partnership.

In the interview we’ll get into how they met and what they’ve building together to help patients thrive into old age in West Africa. And we’ll also talk about the role of creative collaborations in achieving audacious health moonshot goals. Enjoy!

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Unpluq Helps People Get Off Their Screens and Back into Life

May 3, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedDigital Health, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Innovation, Logan Plaster, mental health, Mental Health & Happiness, Mental Health and Happiness, mental wellness, Wellbeing, wellnessNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:10 — 22.1MB)

Our StartUp Health NOW guest this week is Caroline Cadwell, the CEO and Co-founder of Unpluq – a Dutch company that joined StartUp Health in 2021.

Unpluq is on a mission to empower people to change their digital habits and improve their wellbeing.

Cadwell and her team have designed a consumer-facing device and platform that helps people regain control and intentionality with their time. They’re pushing back against a world where attention span is eroding, which has contributed to lower feelings of wellbeing and a decline in executive function.

Listen in to hear how they’ve tackled the problem.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

How These Two Founders Are Upgrading Maternal Health Through Cultural Competence and Remote Monitoring

April 27, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedAnish Sebastian, babyscripts, Childrens Health, cultural competence, Health, health equity, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Healthcare, Jade Kearney, Logan Plaster, maternal health, remote patient monitoring, She Matters, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:52 — 21.9MB)

Today in the United States, we do an entirely poor job of taking care of our pregnant mothers. If you look at statistics like maternal morbidity and mortality, it’s been going up. And, through the pandemic, it’s only gone downhill. We’re one of the worst – actually the worst – of any advanced country.

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

Today we’ve got two very special guests on the show talking about one extremely important topic: maternal health. This is a topic that has been front and center in health news lately and not for good reasons. In spite of all our progress in healthtech, the US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world.

The World Health Organization reports that a maternal death occurred almost every two minutes in 2020.

What’s worse, maternal health brings to light racial health inequities in a stark and disturbing way. According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.

But we’re not here just to talk about the problem. Our guests are two Health Transformers who have dedicated their lives to changing the maternal health story.

First, you’ll get to hear from Jade Kearney, CEO & Founder of She Matters, a new platform that trains doctors in culturally-competent care so that – among other things – Black women are heard and understood during childbirth. They also created a virtual community for moms to get support and improve the health outcomes for Black mothers.

Next, we’ll have a conversation with Anish Sebastian, CEO & Co-founder of Babyscripts. Babyscripts is a long-time member of our community that is bringing virtual care and remote monitoring into the pregnancy and postpartum journey so that more women get the care they need when and where they need it most.

Listen in for their stories and solutions for upgrading maternal health.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot