Note: I had stopped writing posts in 2017. Started again in late-2024, mostly for AI.
Website. Interesting application of federated learning to solve healthcare's data sharing issues. Their platform allows the secure interaction of algorithm and data - from different entities. Like an escrow. Based on Azure confidential compute. Founded in 2022 at UCSF’s Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI) program. $12M Series A with Sante Ventures and UCSF, Mt. Sinai. Bob Rogers from...
Service industries like consulting, hospitality, restaurants or the local car mechanic, are judged on experience. Healthcare folks would like to think that it's all about outcomes but no one would argue that experience is just as important. And most healthcare experiences suck from a patient's point of view. Docent Health caught my attention last year in July when they raised a healthy $15M...
Virta burst on to the digital health scene recently boasting a $37M funding round and a tech-heavyweight CEO Sami Inkinen who previously co-founded Trulia, the online real-estate platform. Virta is the latest digital health star to follow the trend of what I'm now beginning to identify as tech-enabled care management. Think of it as a healthcare service delivery model where traditional care...
Switzerland-based MindMaze created news early 2016 when it raised a $100 million round of funding at a pre-money valuation of a Billion dollars. It is creating virtual reality products related to neural recovery. The medical-grade product (!imaginatively called MindMotionPRO) embodies the usual inpatient medical device: a set of CPUs and monitors attached to a metal framework on wheels. It has...
The service transaction between a patient and physician has always been looked at closely from a billing perspective. Relatively few attempts have been made to enhance the match-making aspect of it: like which physician is best suited for the given patient? Tweaking this may have cascading effects downstream in the service experience and actual outcome. Years ago, Zocdoc impressed me with their...
The idea is certainly not new. Using VR immersion as a part of mental health treatment has been a subject of academic research and debate for a couple of decades. What usually makes news are opinion articles and university research projects. I've seen commercially-oriented companies (like VirtuallyBetter) but none that gave me the impression of a true 'VR platform for Psychiatrists'. Limbix...
CoverMyMeds is a company in a brilliant niche. ePA - Electronic Prior Authorizations. Usually a doctor's prescription reaches pharmacy, which informs patient when to pick it up. If the drug needs the insurance company's authorization, it's up to the Pharmacist to notice that and get authorization process started (includes paperwork, calls, faxes). Patient may not even find out till they arrive...
Nuna has the right mix of all the tailwinds a startup can ask for: talented team, big funding cushion, valuable data and huge market. Founder Jini Kim was one of the Google PMs who was poached to rescue Healthcare.gov. That inroad, plus personal experience taking care of her autistic brother led to Nuna's current shape. Nuna has the enviable access to Medicaid's records of 74 million...
New ideas surface every day in Healthcare IT, but not all have a clear way to generate revenue. Viable business models are not a necessity to launch an idea in the internet age. However, long-term survival depends on having one. Below is a living list of all the different ways companies reviewed are aiming to generate revenue. Note that the categorizations are not absolute, and one company may...
Amion stands for the question every physician asks at one point or other in their residency - "Am I on?". As I've pointed out before, scheduling is one of the prime candidates for being done externalized - done right by a handful of players, and utilized by everyone else. Unlike the recent upstarts though, Amion has been around for 15 years. You can read the full story here. And unlike vanity...