A phenomenon in both the US and the UK is the digital health accelerator that ‘enrolls’ promising startups and nurtures their entrepreneurial founders with business coaching and limited funding. In the UK, accelerators cluster around universities such as Sheffield, Edinburgh, Ulster, Bristol and Bath. In the US, startup accelerators clustered bicoastally–Boston/New York-Silicon Valley/San Diego–and were dominated by Blueprint Health, StartUp Health and later Rock Health. In the past three years, they have dispersed to places like Minneapolis, Dallas, Phoenix and Philadelphia. Lisa Suennen, no stranger to the scene as a managing partner of advisory service Venture Valkyrie, has written ‘Survival of the Fittest: Health Care Accelerators Evolve Toward Specialization’, published by the California Health Care Foundation. She notes that accelerators, once meant for entrepreneurs/developers to help them bridge the gap from the kitchen table (more…)
IBM Watson decision tools expand, lands at NYC HQ
Confirming that New York metro’s once-devastated (post-dot.com bust) ‘Silicon Alley’ is increasingly attractive to healthcare and tech firms, IBM this past Monday opened its new NYC downtown headquarters at Astor Place for the IBM Watson Group. Our readers have been following the development of Watson in the healthcare decision-making process since 2012 [TTA’s article index here], primarily in oncology (breast and lung cancer), in the UK (via the RSM’s 5 June ‘Big Data’ conference) as well as the US. IBM Watson has smartly created Ecosystem Partners where third parties integrate Watson. The spread is fairly wide: travel (your Editor’s former industry), retail, veterinary care, IT security and support, cognitive computing and of course healthcare. Spotlighted were three companies: @PointofCare, Welltok and GenieMD. (more…)
digihealth pulse Virtual 2014
19-21 May 2013, Virtual
Can’t make ATA 2014? Possibly the first fully virtual conference in digital health, DHPV 2014 has 25+ speakers and is fully accessible online plus archived (helpful as all times are NY/Eastern). Speakers include Unity Stoakes of StartUp Health, Esther Tyson of HICCup (The Way to Wellville–more here), Bertalan Meskó, MD, PhD: medical futurist, Matthew Holt of Health 2.0, Ryan Beckland of Validic [TTA 27 Jan], Jim Lefevere of Roche digital marketing, and more. Register here: pre-event price is $195.97 which goes up on 10 May to $225.97. Agenda Hat tip to Fard Johnmar of the Enspektos digital health consultancy organizing the event.
Accelerator (at last) for older adult supportive tech
Supportive technologies for older adults is perhaps the least buzzy area of health tech. The Aging 2.0 GENerator accelerator is bucking that conventional wisdom. Its initial class of 11 early-stage companies span telecare (Lively, TTA 27 Sep), cognitive assistance (BrainAid), transportation (LiftAid) and product design (Sabi). It also connects companies to an impressive list of 75 mentors including LeadingAge/CAST, Mary Furlong Associates, the OnLok PACE community and Pfizer. Founder Katy Pike of Aging 2.0 has embedded it into San Francisco’s Institute of the Aging, which houses independent living facilities, adult day centers, and a geriatric clinic–ideal places for these startups to field test their approaches directly with their potentially 40 million 65+ market. For this the GENerator takes a not-more-than 2 percent equity stake in these companies; unlike the larger StartUp Health and Blueprint Health, it is right now too small to offer seed capital. MedCityNews
NYeC Digital Health Conference 2013: the trends
Updated 21 November
The third annual New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) Digital Health Conference in New York City attracted several hundred people from the worlds of hospitals, public health, academia, policy makers and health insurers–and the myriad related products and services which will enable these entities to improve their health IT, organization and engage patients in their own health. If there were three buzzword phrases setting the tone, they were interoperability, patient portals and technological innovation. All relate to data–data transfer of patient records between providers to be available regionally (RHIOs) and throughout the state via the SHIN-NY health information exchange (HIE); using data to help people visualize and improve their health; putting data into ‘whole person’ context for providers, integrating it into workflows and to save lives; using data to serve process improvement and tougher standards. And finally there is that old devil cost: reducing the cost of care, reducing expensive readmissions plus co-morbidities and making those tools to do this job more affordable for providers and patients.
NYeC has developed considerably since its early days seven years ago (more…)
Fast funding and sale roundup for Thursday/Friday
A quick summary of news on both recent funding, another recently released funding analysis to add to the pile and sales–one completed, one potential:
- The StartUp Health accelerator is now producing its independent analysis of health tech funding deals, presumably to catch the fire of RockHealth’s recognized quarterly report [TTA 9 July]. The July 2013 Digital Health Insights Funding Report is available in Slideshare format on their website with the most reported news being the 47 percent year-over-year growth to date, contrasting to RockHealth’s 12 percent, though the difference in all three may be the sampling. Practice management, big data and body computing/sensors lead the trends, according to their summary.
- What is intriguing in the July deals is the whopping $40 million Series A funding of Oscar, which will integrate telemedicine (presumably consults) and free generic medications to its members in New York State, where they’ve stated they will be integrated into the Health Exchange in NY State. One wonders how they plan to do so on insurance exchanges which haven’t even started yet and which will be having their own challenges being a retail platform for health plans. Not unexpectedly you’ll find Khosla Ventures and Thrive Capital on the roster. MedSynergies led with a $65 million Series A for their software which will facilitate hospital networks performance monitoring of practices and provider referrals/scheduling. Internationally, Withings raised a $30 million Series A in July. MedCityNews also delves deeper into what they see as trends.
- Fitbit just raised an additional $43 million to add to their previous $23 million. While they are still lagging fitness monitoring rival Jawbone UP by $84 million, rumors abound on what Fitbit plans to do with it: a more fully featured smartwatch? Additional apps to keep their user base engaged?–at the risk of overcomplication? Fortune, TechCrunch
- Toronto-based Diversinet closed their sale to New Jersey-based IMS Health for what seems like a small amount: (US)$3.5 million. Its MobiSecure technology provides government-security level mobile app security to customers such as AirStrip and the US Army. However, they were embroiled in early days in a breakup with a mobile provider, AllOne Health, and despite all their high-level tech clearances, the income realized, according to Mobihealthnews, was only in the $1 million range per year and declining and losses increasing. IMS Health is best known for its healthcare informatics, but has been involved with Ford’s in-car SYNC in development of the Allergy Alert app [TTA 7 Aug 12].
- The ‘For Sale’ sign is also up at BlackBerry, with a corporate committee now officially exploring alliances and a sale, in the usual depressing drill. In a company once ubiquitous enough for smartphone usage to be dubbed ‘Crackberry’, and which still enjoys major worldwide market share and enterprise favor, they cannot get traction with new models. This Editor never used or liked BB, but it’s still kind of sad. ZDNet.
For NY health techies–here’s an accelerator roundup
A sure sign that Silicon Alley in NYC is actually moving beyond the focus on shopping/retail and gaming to support early-stage companies in health tech is in this AlleyWatch guide to 14 accelerators, some of which are exclusively focused on health tech companies but others which may accept the right idea. It should be noted that both Blueprint Health and StartUp Health (with GE Ventures) have moved beyond the angel-funded to more ‘mature’ companies [TTA 15 July]. NY Digital Health Accelerator is a joint initiative of New York eHealth Collaborative and Partnership Fund for New York City [TTA 23 May]. But those without an exclusive focus on financial services or education (for instance), such as NYC SeedStart, Women Innovate Mobile and Founder Institute, may be viable alternatives to the Blueprint-StartUp-NYDHA nexus. It also balances out the fact that NYC is an expensive place to be a startup–only a little less so than SF. Hint, hint UK, European, Israeli and Latin American entrepreneurs–set up shop in NY, and the Coke and a slice (pizza, that is) is on Editor Donna! 14 New York-Based Accelerators to Help You Launch Your Company
First ‘Lucky Thirteen’ StartUp Health/GE program company sold
Breaking News
One of the ‘Lucky Thirteen’ companies, Arpeggi, which entered the joint StartUp Health/GE Ventures program back in April [TTA 4 Apr], has been sold to another early-stage company in the genetics analytics, data management and diagnostic space, Gene by Gene. It is the first acquisition of one of the joint program companies and according to StartUp Health spokesperson Nicole Kinsey, “this is a strong sign of how well the program is is working to accelerate and scale digital health startups. This new combined company will be a major competitor to companies like 23andme and will really offer the consumer market much greater access and affordability to DNA testing and sequencing services.” The Arpeggi group and tech platform will be incorporated fully into Gene by Gene, and according to Unity Stoakes, President of StartUp Health, the latter will now enter the StartUp Health/GE Ventures program. Release (PDF)
Pilot HealthTech NYC winners
The Pilot HealthTech NYC program, which paired health tech innovators with NYC-based providers [TTA 15 March], announced their ten winners on Friday. The companies are: AdhereTech, eCaring, Rip Road, Vital Care Services, BioDigital, Flatiron Health, Sense Health, Bio-Signal Group, Opticology and StarlingHealth. The companies are provided with up to $100,000 each for their pilot projects. A listing of companies and partners is on the Pilot HealthTech website and a summary of the partnerships on StartUp Health’s blog (StartUp Health a program collaborator with Blueprint Health and Health 2.0). Examples:
- StarlingHealth and VillageCare of NYC will place touchscreen tablets (in eight languages) by residents’ bedsides at VillageCare Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. The tablets will deliver education materials to residents, send requests and real-time feedback to administrators. Wall Street Journal/release.
- eCaring and Pace University will use the eCaring care management/monitoring system for six months with a randomly selected group of chronically ill, multicultural older adults in Henry Street Settlement’s Vladeck Cares Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC). eCaring release
- Pace University is also partnering with Vital Care Services, a telehealth provider, to provide services for six months to test the effectiveness of telehealth with diverse communities. This will combine both telehealth monitoring sent to a Pace RN with visits from Pace student technicians to assist with the monitoring process. Pace release.
Healthcare IT–New York’s Next Big Thing
Sponsored by MIT’s Enterprise Forum and held on 8 May 2013, this event reviewed the efforts of entrepreneurs, investors, public entities and accelerators in changing the New York area from a ‘dead zone’ for health tech to a new hub of innovation–in what this Editor considers a record (two-three year) time. (Was it only July 2011 that 90% of local investment went to internet shopping and mobile?)
Moderator: Steven Krein, founder and CEO of health tech accelerator StartUpHealth (most recently in our news for their joint program with GE Ventures’ Healthymagination)
Panel: Jahan Ali, PhD, Senior Vice President, Partnership Fund for New York City; Serge Loncar, Founding President and CEO, CareSpeak Communications; Philippe Chambon, Managing Director, New Leaf Venture Partners
Steve Krein set the tone with predicting that NYC will be the hub of health IT. It is heading towards its tipping point; that healthcare is not only overdue for its time in investment but also where key factors are converging to make this possible–money, universities and companies within reach. Key factors are investors such as the Partnership Fund for NYC, which helped to fund the NY Digital Health Accelerator with the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), which on the day of the meeting graduated eight startups (see ‘Related’ and video) with $300,000 of funding plus three provider pilots; and VC funds such as New Leaf Venture Partners. Updated 14 May (more…)
‘Wildcatting’ health tech acceleration in Texas
Instead of oil wildcatting, well gushers out of ‘Giant’ and the travails of the Ewing family in Dallas, think…tech accelerator. Health Wildcatters is introducing the RockHealth-StartUp Health-Blueprint Health model to the Southwest. Executive director/co-founder Hubert Zajicek, MD announced an initial class of 15, with applications accepted in May. The program starts in late August and extends for 12 weeks. On completion, each company will receive $35,000 in seed funding in exchange for 8 percent equity. The Southwest has had some incubator action–in Texas at NTEC (where Dr. Zajicek was previously medical technology director) and Arizona’s SEEDSTART [TTA 5 Feb]–but accelerators have largely stayed glued to the poles of San Francisco/Silicon Valley, San Diego, New York and Boston. However, both Dallas and Houston are major US–and international, mainly Mexico, Central and South America–health delivery, educational and tech hubs. The Wildcatters have raised $1 million from about 30 investors, including physicians and local entrepreneurs, many of whom will also invest time as mentors. According to Mobihealthnews, they include Mike Bartlett, founder of vision test app makers Vital Art and Science and Michael Gorton, founder of telemedicine provider Teladoc; another major investor is Green Park & Golf Ventures. Co-founders and partners are Gabriella Draney (also of related Tech Wildcatters), Clay Heighten, MD and Carl Soderstrom. Dallas Morning News article. More information on their website.
StartUp Health adds AARP education on 50+ tech
Health tech accelerator StartUp Health is wisely pointing their entrepreneurs towards ‘the jobs to be done’ of the 50+ age group via a new partnership with AARP. AARP is sponsoring the development of educational content for entrepreneurs in the StartUp Health Academy as part of their Innovation@50+ initiative. They are also sponsoring StartUp Health’s quarterly industry research reports as well as trend data and intelligence. This is StartUp Health’s second high level partnership, after their joint program with GE Ventures Healthymagination [TTA 4 April]. StartUp Health/AARP release.
It’s good business and societal benefit sense. Lather, rinse, repeat: The 50+ market will comprise 45 percent of the US population by 2015. Extended thoughts on differentiating the needs of the ‘young old’ versus the 70-80+ group–and how individual older people have different takeups on tech; Stephanie Baum gives the example of her 80 year-old mom who just upgraded her iPhone and downloads apps, but finds it difficult to do online search. What do seniors need? (MedCityNews)
Related: The Oxitone wrist-worn blood oxygen meter is one of the StartUp Health/GE ‘Lucky Thirteen’ and is profiled in this Times of Israel article. [TTA 7 Sept 2012, 24 Feb 2012] Notably it’s one of only two non-US companies in the group–the other is Ireland’s GetHealth.
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