Tag Archives: womens health

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.

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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.

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

February 24, 2023Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, StartupsBreast Cancer, Cancer, Funding, Gabbi, Health Mindsets, Health Moonshot, Insights, Kaitlin Christine, Logan Plaster, Mindsets, Moonshot Mindset, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:22 — 24.2MB)

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?

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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.

Lactation Lab Gets FDA Breakthrough Device Designation to Help Babies Get the Nutrition They Need

June 21, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsChildrens Health, Health Transformer, Health Transformers, Lactation Lab, Logan Plaster, Moonshots, Stephanie Canale, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:34 — 31.6MB)

Our guest this week is Stephanie Canale, MD, the CEO & Founder of Lactation Lab, which StartUp Health backed in 2019.

As a family doctor and as a mother, Dr. Canale saw firsthand the challenges faced by new moms when it comes to feeding their babies. What she saw again and again was that mothers simply didn’t have information about their own breastmilk. Was it low in certain nutrients? Would the child benefit from a supplement? Why, she wondered, was there so much guesswork about something so essential to infant thriving? So, she came up with a testing kit that analyzes breast milk to show exactly what nutrition their infant is getting, allowing mothers to replenish anything that is deficient.

We dialed up Dr. Canale this week for two reasons. One was to get her take on the current infant formula shortage, since she works so closely with new parents. But also, in exciting news, Lactation Lab has just received FDA Breakthrough designation for a device they’ve built that’s being used in hospitals to make sure that the most at-risk babies get the nutrients they need to grow and thrive. Dr. Canale explains all about it in our interview and how this FDA Breakthrough Device designation has changed her company’s trajectory in interesting ways.

Learn more and connect with the team at Lactation Lab.

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Health Transformers Live: Gray Oncology Solutions, Gennev, AvoMD, Valera Health

April 5, 2022Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, Startups2022 StartUp Health Festival, Access to care, Cancer, Cure Disease, End Cancer, Health Moonshots, Lauren Schafer, mental health, Moonshots, StartUp Health @ ViVE, StartUp Health Festival, ViVE 2022, ViVE Miami, womens healthNicole Kinsey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:29 — 17.9MB)

This week we wanted to break from our typical format and introduce you to four inspiring founders from the StartUp Health portfolio.

This episode is excerpted from an on-stage Health Transformer discussion that was held at the StartUp Health Festival @ ViVE in Miami Beach in March. You’ll hear from André Diamant, PhD, CEO & Founder of Gray Oncology Solutions, about how they’re improving efficiency in cancer care. Jill Angelo, CEO & Founder of Gennev, talks about how they’re improving women’s health in their post-reproductive years. Yair Saperstein, MD, CEO & Co-founder of AvoMD, explains how they’re crowdsourcing knowledge in order to put the best decision support tools in the palm of the physician’s hand. And finally, Tom Tsang, MD, CEO & Co-founder of Valera Health, explains how his company is bringing comprehensive mental health services to the virtual healthcare ecosystem.

The session was hosted by Lauren Schafer from StartUp Health. In addition to sharing the moonshot missions of each of their companies, they talk about changes seen in health innovation due to COVID’s impact, their biggest messages for partners and investors, and more.

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How Babyscripts Powers ‘Connected Pregnancies’ and Brings OB Care Where It’s Needed

June 8, 2021Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAnish Sebastian, babyscripts, coronavirus, Health Moonshot Update, Juan Pablo Segura, Logan Plaster, womens healthStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:18 — 26.5MB)

In this episode, we sit down with Juan Pablo Segura, co-founder of Babyscripts, about virtual healthcare for moms-to-be.Around 50% of counties in the United States don’t have an OBGYN to take care of moms when they’re expecting. That’s around 10 million women who don’t have access to an OB for prenatal or primary care. At Babyscripts, Juan Pablo and his co-founder Anish Sebastian put together a kit of devices that pairs with an app so that OBs can monitor the health of their patients every day, virtually. Given the access problem, It’s an area of health where virtual care just made a lot of sense, but the COVID pandemic tipped it over the edge. Technology that used to be a forward-thinking nice-to-have is now a must-have – which is good news for expectant moms everywhere.

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Transforming Women’s Health With Dorothee Goldman and Missy Lavender

May 18, 2021Business, Health, Innovation, Insights, UncategorizedDorothee Goldman, Health Moonshot Series, India Edwards, Logan Plaster, Missy Lavender, Oratel Diagnostics, Renalis, womens healthStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:20 — 29.3MB)

At StartUp Health, we strongly believe that being a woman shouldn’t be a health risk factor. That’s why we’ve devoted an entire health moonshot to improving the health of every woman all around the globe, no matter the barrier. In this podcast episode, we dialed up two female entrepreneurs in the StartUp Health portfolio innovating in the Women’s Health Moonshot: Dorothee Goldman, the CEO and founder of Oratel Diagnostics, who built the first solution that can diagnose endometriosis using saliva, and Missy Lavender, CEO and founder of Renalis, who’s created an innovative solution to improve experiences and outcomes for people with pelvic health conditions. Hosts Logan Plaster and India Edwards learn how Goldman and Lavender are working to change the health paradigm in areas of women’s health that were neglected in the past.This episode is part of a new Health Moonshot Programming podcast series, where we’ll highlight a new health moonshot – and inspiring health transformers – each month

With Finess, Privy CEO Evi Heilbrunn Is Breaking Down Stigmas in the Women’s Health Aisle

January 26, 2021Business, Health, InnovationDigital Health, Evi Heilbrunn, Logan Plaster, moonshot, Privy, StartUp Health, womens healthStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:30 — 33.7MB)

Because she’s tackling a stigmatized area of women’s health, one that’s been swept to the side for a long time, Privy CEO Evi Heilbrunn has had to do her research and educate the market. By doing so, she’s showing retailers like Target – where Finess is now on the shelf – that women’s health products were in need of an upgrade, and that we’re on the cusp of a whole new way of thinking about the whole women’s health aisle.

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New VC Funds Put Women’s Health Moonshot Front and Center

November 4, 2020Business, Health, Innovation, Startups, UncategorizedBlack Female Entrepreneurs, Covid 19, female entrepreneurs, health innovation, investing, investment, Katya Hancock, Maria Velissaris, StartUp Health, SteelSky Ventures, VC firm, Venture, womens healthStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:47 — 62.9MB)

In today’s venture capital world, the vast majority of decisions are made by male investors – by one recent estimate, 87% of partners at digital health venture funds are men. This imbalance has resulted in an overall lack of investment in women’s health innovations, and in female founders. That’s shifting thanks in part to investors like Maria Velissaris, our guest on this week’s episode. Maria was a successful entrepreneur and business development maven before she became a managing Partner at SteelSky Ventures. SteelSky is a VC firm with a laser focus on women’s health, and a desire to see women-run startups get the funding they deserve. Today’s conversation has been pulled from an expert office hour held by StartUp Health and attended by entrepreneurs from the StartUp Health portfolio. So in addition to Maria’s insights – on investment trends, how to pitch, and how COVID-19 has changed the game – you’ll get to hear real-life questions from founders who are working in the trenches. The session was moderated by Katya Hancock, StartUp Health’s Investor Network Director. Enjoy.

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Anish Sebastian and Babyscripts Are Showing the World That a Connected Pregnancy Is a Healthier Pregnancy

September 8, 2020Business, Health, Innovation, StartupsAnish Sebastian, baby care, babyscripts, childbirth, Digital Health, Juan Pablo Segura, Logan Plaster, postpartum care, pregnancy, pregnancy care, prenatal care, StartUp Health, womens healthStartUp Health NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:38 — 24.4MB)

On this episode we talk to Anish Sebastian, CEO and co-founder of Babyscripts. Founded by Sebastian and his business partner Juan Pablo Segura in 2014, Babyscripts uses connected health devices – like a bluetooth-enabled blood pressure monitor – and an app to help women have better pregnancies. OBGYNs, who prescribe the app to their patients, get a steady stream of data, helping them intervene early in cases of high blood pressure or other complications. And moms-to-be are given the tools to communicate with their doctor throughout their pregnancy. Babyscripts has been involved in more than 200,000 pregnancies and with every new provider partnership they sign, they open up access to high quality pre and post natal care. StartUP Health’s Logan Plaster caught up with Anish to get the latest.

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