Tag Archives: Healthcare

AI in Healthcare: Separating Hype from Reality on the Front Lines

April 19, 2024Health, Innovation, StartupsAccess to care, Access to Care Moonshot, AI, artificial intelligence, Cure Disease, diabetes, Health, Health Moonshot, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Healthcare, Innovation, Metabolic, Metabolic Health, Moonshots, T1D, T1D MoonshotNicole Kinsey

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Tired of overblown claims about AI in healthcare?
This episode dives into the real, impactful ways AI is transforming patient care.

Join us as we chat with founders in the StartUp Health community who are using AI to improve healthcare for patients and providers:

Jerrod Ullah, HealthTalk A.I.: Hear how his experience as an ICU nurse fueled an AI platform that boosts engagement for both patients and providers.
Kavi Misri, Hibiscus Health: Discover how their end-to-end solution empowers people with metabolic conditions to take control of their health.

This episode is for you if:

You’re curious about the practical applications of AI in healthcare.
You want to hear inspiring stories from healthcare entrepreneurs.
You’re eager to learn how AI can improve patient outcomes.

Get ready for a refreshing take on AI in healthcare!

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our new Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

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

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

How Two Founders Raised Millions During a Challenging Funding Market

April 4, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, Startups9amHealth, Anton Kittleberger, Funding, Health, Health Tech, Healthcare, Innovation, Logan Plaster, Matt Swanson, Reciprocity HealthNicole Kinsey

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As a healthcare startup, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t have the capital to hire the right people, build your product, and survive a long sales cycle, you’re unlikely to have a huge impact. To put it simply, raising funds has been challenging for health startups over the last couple years.

In this StartUp Health NOW episode, we dive into the realm of funding challenges – and despite the hurdles, we bring you tales of hope and inspiration from two founders who successfully raised significant early capital.

First up is Matt Swanson, CEO & Co-founder of Reciprocity Health. Reciprocity Health – which joined the StartUp Health community in 2023 shortly after their launch – offers personalized digital programs with financial incentives for completing health actions, aiming to improve patient engagement. Despite being in business for just one year, Swanson and his team secured more than $5 million in funding to expand their innovative financial incentive program. Swanson shares the critical elements that paved the way for their successful first raise.

Next, we sit down with Anton Kittleberger, Co-CEO & Co-founder of 9amHealth. 9amHealth – which joined StartUp Health in 2022 – offers comprehensive care for chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity through a virtual clinic. Kittleberger and his team recently closed a substantial $9.5 million Series A extension, leveraging a unique leadership structure and capitalizing on emerging trends in the healthcare market. Discover how they navigated the challenges and capitalized on opportunities to propel their virtual clinic for cardiometabolic conditions to new heights.

Join us as we uncover the strategies, insights, and stories behind these funding successes. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this episode offers invaluable lessons and inspiration for anyone navigating the healthcare startup landscape. Tune in and get ready to be inspired!

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our new Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

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

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

Inside the Health Moonshot Impact Board: A Conversation with Margaret Laws and Shirley Bergin

March 22, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAI, ARPA-H, artificial intelligence, Health, health innovation, Health Moonshot Impact Board, Healthcare, HopeLab, Logan Plaster, Margaret Laws, mental health, Shirley Bergin, StartUp Health, TEDMEDNicole Kinsey

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This week on StartUp Health NOW, we have again handed over the microphones to two members of our Health Moonshot Impact Board and having them interview each other.

At one end of the table we’ve got Margaret Laws, CEO & President of HopeLab, former Director of Innovations for the Underserved at CHCF, and Founder of the CHCF Health Innovation Fund, and at the other end of the interview table is Shirley Bergin, Senior Advisor at ARPA-H, Former CMO/COO of TEDMED, and Advisor to Ellipsis Health and Cure.

The goal of the conversation was simply to hear about the latest projects and passions of two of the most influential and interesting people in health innovation. In the interview, which took place in person at the Lake Nona Impact Forum in Florida, we cover a range of topics, from youth mental health, to the role of AI in diagnostics, to education to address global gaps in the healthcare workforce.

Margaret Laws and Shirley Bergin are thought leaders in health innovation, but they’re also deeply involved in directing funds towards promising programs, so it will be interesting to see how their curiosities and passions as played out here will lead to concrete moves in the future.

Enjoy the conversation.

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our new Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? Learn how you can get one of the last spots in our T1D Moonshot.

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

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

Inside the Health Moonshot Impact Board: Esther Dyson & Roger Jansen Get Candid on Health Innovation

March 8, 2024Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsEsther Dyson, Health, health innovation, Health Moonshot Impact Board, Healthcare, Impact Board, Innovation, Logan Plaster, Michigan State University Health Care, Roger Jansen, StartUp Health, WellvilleNicole Kinsey

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Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW!

We think it’s fair to say that when people think of StartUp Health, they think about entrepreneurs and founders. Over the last 12 or 13 years we’ve supported more than 500 health tech startups and nearly 1000 founders, many of whom have been featured on this show.

Perhaps less well known is what happens behind the scenes at StartUp Health. In this episode we pull back that curtain a little bit, particularly as it pertains to our Health Moonshot Impact Board. We’ve got this advisory team of about 17 amazing individuals across multiple disciplines. These are people like Dr. Toby Cosgrove, former head of the Cleveland Clinic; Chuck Henderson, the CEO of the American Diabetes Association; and Sue Siegel, former head of GE Ventures – just to name three. You can see the whole Health Moonshot Impact Board here on our website.

Recently, we brought together our Health Moonshot Impact Board in real life at the Lake Nona Impact Forum in Florida. Not only did the team get to learn from luminaries like Jeff Bezos, David Feinberg, and Peter Lee, but they got to go deeper on ideas with one another.

In the spirit of encouraging a more radically collaborative impact board, we decided to flip the script a bit and have members of our board interview one another for this podcast. The hope was that this would lead to some unexpected lines of questioning and some uniquely candid moments.

The first conversation in this series is between Esther Dyson, legendary angel investor and founder of Wellville, and Roger Jansen, PhD, the Chief Innovation & Digital Health Officer at Michigan State University Health Care. The conversation was just as wide-ranging and unstructured as we hoped it would be, and it touched on some incredibly powerful topics.

We hope you enjoy.

Innovating in Alzheimer’s disease? Learn how you can join our new Alzheimer’s Moonshot.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? Learn how you can get one of the last spots in our T1D Moonshot.

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

Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become a Health Moonshot Champion

How Two Founders Are Using AI to Tackle Wasteful Healthcare Spending

November 30, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAI, artificial intelligence, Cost to Zero, Health Cost IQ, Health Moonshots, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Healthcare, healthcare spending, Hindsait, Innovation, Jude Odu, Logan Plaster, Pinaki DasguptaNicole Kinsey

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On this StartUp Health NOW episode, we’re talking about wasteful spending in healthcare. This is one of those topics that’s hard to put in perspective. The institute of medicine says that 30% of healthcare spending could be categorized as wasteful, putting the total tab north of $750 million. It could be a trillion dollars.

Health insurance premiums are up 7% year over year, according to Health Affairs. Analysts point to inflation as a strong cause, but this nearly trillion dollars in unnecessary spending isn’t helping the equation.

Bottom line, healthcare costs are out of control and driving many people into medical bankruptcy. If 30% of healthcare spending is unnecessary, we’ve got to get this under control. Thankfully, we’ve got founders in the StartUp Health community who are passionate about this issue.

Jude Odu, CEO & Founder of Health Cost IQ, and Pinaki Dasgupta, CEO & Founder of Hindsait, will help us understand what constitutes wasteful spending and how advances in AI allow us to root it out at the source.

This is the kind of innovation that takes some courage, because pointing out to a hospital that they’re double billing or telling an insurer that they’re making massive errors doesn’t make you popular with either party. But it’s got to be done if we’re going to get overall health costs under control.

Enjoy the episode.

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Innovators: Health Transformer University fuels your health moonshot

Funders: Become 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.

From the Archives: A Look at How Andreessen Horowitz Invests in the Future of Health

July 27, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, Startupsa16z, Andreessen Horowitz, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, Health Startup, Healthcare, HealthTech, investing, Investors, Julie Yoo, Logan Plaster, Startup, WisdomNicole Kinsey

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On this week’s StartUp Health NOW, we look back at one of our most-popular podcast episodes: a chat with Julie Yoo, a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz – where she leads investments in healthcare technology, with a focus on companies that are modernizing how we access, pay for, and experience the healthcare system. During this chat in front of a live audience of founders from the StartUp Health community, Yoo talked about the growth of home health, fintech for healthcare, and her personal passions around solving for provider shortage issues and the mismatch of supply and demand.

Listen in for insights that are just as relevant today as in November 2021, such as Yoo’s tip that top investors like a16z are less interested in startups who have all the answers – because they don’t – than in entrepreneurs who can identify and overcome obstacles and can communicate that journey with clarity.

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

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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 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

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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

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

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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

Inside Healthcare Sales: Building a Revenue Strategy for Your Health Moonshot

February 10, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsCollin Stewart, Health Tech, Healthcare, Innovation, Jamey Edwards, Logan Plaster, Revenue, StartUp HealthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:57 — 43.0MB)

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

As we’ve reported recently, the health tech funding landscape has tightened in the last year. In other words, it’s harder to raise money for your business. But there’s an upside to this cooler market: There’s a heightened emphasis being put on the fundamentals of business like cash flow and profitability. That means less noise being generated around innovations that turn out to be smoke and mirrors and more focused on smart, sustainable business ideas. That’s good news for the right kind of founders, the ones we call Health Transformers.

But, it still isn’t easy. When a startup is facing an ever-shrinking runway and having to show strong revenue numbers, it can be difficult to take the time to formulate a cohesive sales strategy that allows the business not only to survive the long sales cycle in healthcare, but thrive long term as it seeks to achieve its audacious health moonshot.

To help founders tackle this challenge head on, we invited Collin Stewart, the CEO of Predictable Revenue, to join us for a recent Fireside Chat. The conversation was hosted by Jamey Edwards in front of a live virtual audience of founders from the StartUp Health portfolio. They cover themes like being radically open to market feedback and even pull some wisdom from Collin’s days as a professional musician.

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

Investors: Contact 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.