Tag Archives: Health Transformers

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.

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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’re 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

How Lifestores Is Using Their $3M Raise to Upgrade Drug Procurement in West Africa

April 20, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Cost to Zero, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Lagos, Lifestores, Logan Plaster, Nigeria, West AfricaNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:19 — 23.2MB)

Our guest this week is Andrew Garza, co-founder of Lifestores Healthcare, a company that joined StartUp Health in 2019.

When Andrew and his co-founder Bryan Mezue were launching their business in Lagos, Nigeria, their focus was on creating a chain of tech-enabled pharmacies – and by doing so, they’d create an accessible avenue for primary care in one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.

Fast forward a few years and they’ve done a couple key things, which we’ll cover in the interview. They’ve layered on top of the pharmacy business a platform for drug procurement and logistics that saves hospitals money while raising the bar on quality. And, they’ve raised a $3M pre-Series A, which will allow them to expand in exciting ways. We’ll get into all of that in the conversation, plus hear a bit about Andrew’s journey from the East Coast of the US to the West Coast of Africa.

We hope you enjoy.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

ChatGPT Was Just the Beginning: Victor Wang on the Future of AI in Healthcare

April 6, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAI, artificial intelligence, avatar, care.coach, Chat GPT, ChatGPT, conversational AI, conversational avatar, future of AI, generative AI, Health, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Healthcare, StartUp Health @ ViVE, victor wang, ViVE, ViVE 2023Nicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:12 — 20.3MB)

Victor Wang, CEO & Founder of StartUp Health company care.coach, is at the tip of the spear of the AI-in-health revolution. He’s got an insider’s understanding of how technology like ChatGPT will shape healthcare. An MIT-trained roboticist who worked for NASA, Victor has created a conversational avatar that cares for seniors and people with disabilities. Currently there’s a human in the loop, but as you’ll hear in the interview, Victor has no trouble imagining a future where conversational AI is able to care for people in a more autonomous, scaleable way.

Perhaps most telling, and timely, about this interview, is hearing Victor’s words of caution about the future of artificial intelligence in healthcare and the burden that rests on companies doing this work to get it right, so that we don’t have an AI backlash and lose out on all the ways this technology can help humanity.

Victor is a brilliant founder and always a pleasure to sit down with, even on the noisy floor of a healthcare conference like ViVE. We hope you enjoy.

Founders: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

How Scan.com Is Using Their Recent Series A Funding to Break into the US Market

March 24, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Health Moonshots, Health Transformers, Innovation, MoonshotsNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:21 — 26.9MB)

On this week’s StartUp Health NOW podcast episode, we sat down with Charlie Bullock, the CEO and Co-founder of Scan.com, which is, to oversimplify, an online marketplace for diagnostic imaging services. We wanted to dial Charlie up for two reasons. The first is that this StartUp Health company has officially grown from their UK roots to developing a significant beachhead in the United States. We wanted to get a play by play about that process and distill some useful cross-border growth strategies for our listeners. The second reason for the call was that Scan.com just – this week – announced a major fundraise, which is going to put this US expansion into high gear.

In our conversation Charlie shares a bit of his personal journey as an entrepreneur, gets into all the details about their recent raise, and outlines some do’s and don’ts for breaking into the US market.

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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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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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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New Hubs for Health Innovation: Why These Health Transformers Are Building Their Startups in Columbus, Pittsburgh & Baltimore

February 17, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsBaltimore, Beth Sanders, Columbus, Health Transformers, LifeBio, Logan Plaster, Max Sims, MindTrace, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Shameet Luhar, Vheda HealthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:00 — 31.1MB)

Every quarter we publish a little thing called the StartUp Health Insights report. It’s all about health innovation funding, and one of the data points we track is where in the world health innovation funding is landing. We call these health innovation hubs, and the same three or four cities always dominate the list. Companies in San Francisco, New York, Boston, and London account for the vast majority of dollars raised in healthcare.

However, at StartUp Health, we know it takes a global village to transform health and there is so much inspiring work happening outside of these cities. Steve Case, former CEO of AOL and an early investor in StartUp Health, famously launched the “Rise of the Rest” campaign which was aimed at showcasing the innovation happening in so-called “flyover cities” like St. Louis, Detroit, and Omaha.

We agree with Case that it’s imperative that we back entrepreneurs in more places in order to benefit from a diversity of thought and experience. At StartUp Health we’ve invested in companies from 29 countries, so we wanted to take an episode of the podcast and dedicate it to a few of these stories. Great startups being built in, let’s call them, “less conspicuous” cities.

In this StartUp Health NOW episode, you’ll hear interviews with Health Transformers from our portfolio who have chosen to build their companies near Columbus, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. And not because they couldn’t pay the San Francisco rent, but because these environments held hidden gems and opportunities for their businesses, from local talent to affordable workspaces to engaged professional networks.

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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.

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.