Digital Health Startups Backed by Global Accelerators in Q2 2016 File for IPO

The purpose of accelerators is to provide multidimensional entrepreneurial resource support to fast-growing companies. In the first quarter of 2016, according to statistical analysis by VCBeat, three overseas accelerators announced their seed cohorts, comprising a total of 31 projects. By the end of the second quarter of 2016, the number remained largely unchanged, with four overseas accelerators announcing 29 major digital health projects they had accepted. These were TechStars in partnership with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Merck Digital Health Accelerator, StartUp Health in partnership with GE Ventures, and Healthbox.

TechStars, founded in 2007 and headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, USA, currently has branches in cities such as New York, Seattle, Boston, and San Antonio. TechStars introduces a mentorship system to incubate the startups it accepts, providing each startup with 10 mentors to ensure they receive high levels of attention from their mentors.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, founded in 1902, is a non-profit hospital and research institution located in Los Angeles, dedicated to providing world-class medical services to patients worldwide.

At the start of the second quarter, TechStars announced a partnership with Cedars-Sinai to launch a three-month accelerator program, jointly introducing 11 startups. In addition to receiving a $120,000 investment from TechStars and mentorship from industry experts and entrepreneurs, each selected company will also receive guidance from clinicians and healthcare administrators at Cedars-Sinai.

AppliedVRIt is a virtual reality platform designed to enhance the patient experience, focusing on improving rehabilitation efficiency and maximizing the value of medical care. This initial perioperative platform is intended to engage patients throughout all stages of their journey in hospitals and surgical centers, providing a non-pharmacological alternative for managing pain and anxiety associated with medical procedures.

HomeHeroHomeHero is a non-medical, high-tech home care provider that helps users find, hire, and manage high-quality in-home caregivers for elderly family members. The platform offers a streamlined online and mobile experience, reducing the time, cost, and risk associated with finding local caregivers by providing features such as high-definition video introductions of caregivers, customer reviews, liability insurance, clear scheduling, and integrated payment tools. HomeHero’s services are non-medical in nature and cover a wide range of assistance, including grocery shopping, meal preparation, exercise support, light housekeeping, companionship, and personal care.

Stasis LabsIt provides portable, continuous medical monitoring, enabling doctors, nursing teams, and family members to identify clinical changes and implement interventions before critical events occur. The company targets hospitals in emerging markets, offering them customized vital signs monitors, tablet apps, and cloud-based services. Stasis Labs is committed to ensuring that caregivers remain informed of patients’ health status at all times. The company planned to enter India’s rapidly growing healthcare market starting in 2016.

EllaIt is a mobile health application designed to help pain patients better manage their symptoms. The company is partnering with Cedars-Sinai to provide Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs to 10,000 patients by the end of 2017.

GraceTo provide families with comprehensive, technology-driven end-of-life care and etiquette services, helping them address issues such as the passing of loved ones and funeral logistics.

Deep 6 AnalyticsIt can analyze unstructured data in electronic medical records (EMRs) and leverage the latest natural language processing (NLP) techniques, medical ontologies, and machine learning to identify medical patterns and relationships. Your EMR data will no longer be siloed and fragmented; furthermore, the system provides access to community insights and best practices, helping physicians determine the optimal treatment plans for patients.

SilversheetIt is a mobile healthcare management service platform that primarily provides electronic management and storage services for documents and medical records to healthcare institutions.

Inscope MedicalManufacturing a disposable, low-cost video laryngoscope that serves as an all-in-one tracheal intubation solution, providing clear images for every airway.

WELL HealthEstablish a secure communication platform for patients and healthcare providers to facilitate doctor-patient interaction.

ZendyHealthSelect suitable local doctors (dentistry, aesthetics, primary care) and digital health services based on users' payment preferences to deliver high-quality, affordable care.

YoskoYosko is a hospital care coordination platform that enhances team collaboration, patient transitions, and workflow efficiency. Yosko integrates deeply with electronic health records (EHRs), providing seamless connectivity of patient data between EHR systems and mobile devices, along with real-time information flow. The platform has been certified for compatibility with the Allscripts Sunrise EHR software.

Merck, a Fortune Global 500 pharmaceutical giant headquartered in Germany, has been cultivating its healthcare accelerator ecosystem since 2010. It has established initiatives such as the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund (Merck GHI) and Merck Medical Information & Innovation (M2i2). Leveraging its extensive healthcare ecosystem accumulated over many years, Merck collaborates closely with healthcare investment firms to support startups worldwide and deliver solutions for the global healthcare system.

Additionally, Merck is an investor in the renowned digital health accelerator Rock Health and the New York Digital Health Accelerator (NYDHA). In the second quarter of 2016, three African digital health startups announced their participation in Merck’s accelerator program in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, while other companies joined Merck’s accelerator program in Darmstadt, Germany.

The startup from Merck’s Nairobi project will receive $15,000 in funding, as well as mentoring from Merck’s global experts. Flare is an Uber-like transportation network company that makes ambulance services more accessible in Nairobi.

Miti HealthDedicated to improving the pharmaceutical supply chain. Leveraging technological infrastructure to optimize the inefficient supply chains of current private pharmaceutical enterprises, with solutions covering inventory management and quality certification.

GiftedMomDedicated to addressing the critical issue of high maternal and infant mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is an SMS- and voice-driven mobile health platform that provides expectant mothers with relevant medical information and recommends healthcare institutions for pregnancy planning and preparation.

Startups in the Merck Darmstadt project will receive €25,000 in funding, along with regular mentoring from Merck and office space in Darmstadt.

MatibabuIt is an app developed by a Ugandan company, based on the principle of diagnosing malaria without requiring blood samples. It utilizes the smartphone camera to diagnose malaria by measuring light absorption at the fingertip when the user presses their finger against the lens.

StartUp Health, founded by Steven Krein and Unity Stoakes in 2011, is a global leader in healthcare transformation. StartUp Health boasts the world’s largest portfolio of digital health companies, with its ventures spanning 12 countries. Its platforms include StartUp Health Academy, StartUp Health Network, StartUp Health Ventures, and StartUp Health Media.

GE Ventures focuses on software, advanced manufacturing, energy, and healthcare. By combining equity investments, new business creation, licensing, and technology transfer, GE Ventures provides a platform for innovation aimed at driving growth for both its partners and GE.

In October 2015, StartUp Health and GE Ventures announced a partnership to drive innovation in virtual health solutions, having already onboarded 19 startups. As an expansion of this collaborative initiative, StartUp Health and GE Ventures focused on value-based healthcare services in 2016, supporting companies in developing clinical workflow and long-term care management solutions, with plans to select at least seven startups this year.

In the second quarter of 2016, the accelerator program jointly launched by StartUp Health and GE Ventures has admitted the following three members.

Biome Analytics—Stuart Jacobson, Founder and CEO(Location: Sausalito, California; Subfield: Hospital Management)Biome Analytics aims to help hospitals deliver the best cardiovascular care at the lowest cost. It aggregates data and develops applications to provide physicians and hospitals with the information needed to ensure that the 26.6 million Americans diagnosed with cardiovascular disease receive optimal care at minimal cost.

Jiseki Health —Founder and CEO Tushar Vasisht(Location: San Mateo, California; Subfield: Patient Engagement)Jiseki Health’s mission is to leverage advanced technology to bridge the gap between hospital-based clinical care and community health support resources, enabling the delivery of higher-quality, more accountable healthcare services. Ultimately, this ensures that patients receive appropriate care at the right time, in the right place, and at an optimal cost.

WinguMD—Manabu Tokunaga, Founder and CEO(Location: Palo Alto, California; Subfield: Medical Imaging)WinguMD aims to “intelligently” transform all mobile medical images, vividly illustrating clinical scenarios in ways that written data cannot match. WinguMD’s BodyMapSnap extracts metadata from image acquisition, providing physicians with body positioning and annotation tools. By integrating intelligent object size measurement and document recognition technologies, it turns every image into a clinical tool. Furthermore, it enables seamless sharing with existing electronic medical record (EMR) and picture archiving and communication system (PACS) solutions.

Healthbox is a digital health accelerator headquartered in Orlando, Florida, USA. It launched its inaugural accelerator program in January 2012 to help entrepreneurs gain deeper insights into the current state of the healthcare industry and identify sustainable business models. Over the years, Healthbox has been committed to providing strategic support and guidance to innovative companies, helping them discover and implement transformative healthcare solutions.

In the second quarter of 2016, Healthbox announced that 11 digital health startups would participate in its accelerator program at Lake Nona in Orlando. Healthbox will provide the selected companies with an eight-week program and business mentoring, along with professional consulting services to help them bring their products to market.

BloomAPIis a San Francisco-based software company that helps institutions connect to real-time electronic health record (EHR) data within five minutes.

Buoy Healthis a Boston-based software company whose virtual doctor can diagnose patients and provide medical education on their potential symptoms, sparing them the hassle of searching for relevant information online.

CarePredictBased in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the company produces wearable sensor devices capable of detecting declines in health status. It is dedicated to addressing the issue of excessive reliance on manual monitoring for identifying health deterioration in the elderly by developing technologies for machine perception and learning.

Dbaza HealthHeadquartered in Pittsburgh, the company has developed a patient engagement platform to manage and reduce costs associated with chronic diseases such as diabetes. The platform has been clinically validated.

DoctellaHeadquartered in Sunnyvale, California, the company helps hospitals improve quality, reduce costs, and implement critical, timely interventions by providing patients and their families with smart checklists and monitoring their real-time engagement.

Hint HealthHeadquartered in San Francisco, the company is a clearinghouse platform for direct-pay healthcare organizations.

Headquartered in St. Petersburg, KynderMed has developed a proprietary, non-invasive, light-based sleep mask solution designed to reduce factors that may lead to preterm birth.

PotentiaMetricsis an information technology company based in Austin, Texas, that provides a dedicated real-world clinical outcomes registry and analytics platform to uncover insights for personalized medicine and predictive analytics.

Rimidi DiabetesHeadquartered in Atlanta, the company enables healthcare systems to deliver more efficient care for patients with diabetes, thereby improving their quality of life and reducing the financial burden on both the healthcare system and patients.

Senscio SystemsHeadquartered on Bucksport Road in Massachusetts, the company offers a complex care management solution that leverages artificial intelligence to proactively detect complications at home and deliver timely, targeted interventions.

SMRxTIt is a high-tech company headquartered in Orlando, Florida, that employs a patient-centered real-time medication adherence system to empower users to fully understand and manage challenges related to medication adherence.