Wellpepper and CirrusMD: 2015 mHealth Summit Venture+ Forum Winners File for IPO

The annual mHealth Summit convened in the United States on the 10th. Held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Washington, D.C., this global mobile health conference centered its entire agenda around the theme: “Any Time, Any Place, Any Patient, Any Provider.”The four-day event primarily featured keynote addresses by industry leaders, complex programming tracks, interactive exhibitions, pre-conference workshops, and formal sessions.Earlier, on November 10, speakers at the Venture+ Forum of the 2015 Global mHealth Summit announced that they had selected four finalists from eleven mobile health startups to compete in the finals held on the morning of the 11th (4:00 PM–6:00 PM Eastern Time). The Venture+ Forum brought together top digital health innovators, business leaders, and investors from across the United States to comprehensively discuss and explore today’s most promising startups.

The four selected companies are mainly:CircleLink Health：Provide solutions for patients with chronic diseases, primarily by connecting them with clinical call centers through a mobile app, thereby eliminating the hassle of ongoing communication;CirrusMD Inc：The company primarily provides “closed-loop” healthcare solutions, integrating SMS, phone calls, social networks, and video consultations into its virtual care system to ensure continuity of patient care.Smart Clinic LLC:It is also a healthcare integration services company that consolidates various aspects of medical care—such as appointment scheduling, access to health information, patient-provider communication, electronic health records (EHRs), and billing—into patients’ mobile apps or browser-based accounts. This approach helps patients reduce unnecessary expenses. With a 22% improvement in clinical efficiency, it has become the official app of the American College of Gastroenterology.WellpepperA healthcare services company that provides sustainable, home-based care plans tailored to patients’ actual conditions, ensuring the full implementation of care plans with genuine patient engagement. It primarily serves patients with chronic diseases and the elderly.Key participants in the discussion include medical innovators from MedStar and Partners Healthcare; investors from Maverick Capital Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Providence Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank; as well as partners from other sectors such as AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), DreamIt Health NYC, and HITLAB. Together, they will offer practical advice on equity investment, customer development, and corporate operations.

During the roundtable discussion held on Wednesday, each company was given three minutes to pitch their products and had the opportunity to debate specific viewpoints with top entrepreneurs on the spot. Startups CirrusMD and Wellpepper were fortunate enough to emerge as the winners of this final competition.The entire selection process was based on which company could maximize improvements in healthcare delivery and demonstrate this through quantifiable metrics. For instance, Wellpepper convinced the judges, through data and research findings, that its product could help patients receive more sustained and effective medical care.“The Venture+ Forum has become a highly anticipated event for healthcare startups, as it offers more rewarding outcomes: face-to-face discussions with industry leaders about business operations, exchanges with outstanding healthcare entrepreneurial companies, and opportunities for public demonstration and promotion,” said Richard Scarfo, Director of the mHealth Summit, after the forum concluded. “The purpose of establishing the Venture+ Forum is to provide a platform for healthcare startups to showcase their innovations, helping promising newcomers in the healthcare entrepreneurship sector gain greater attention and collaboration opportunities from industry leaders. Congratulations to CirrusMD and Wellpepper!”Below is the mHealth SummitVenture+Detailed Introduction of the Forum Winners:

CirrusMDThis is a startup telehealth provider with a remarkably simple vision: to deliver care through various channels other than in-person visits, including SMS, online chat, phone calls, and video consultations. This philosophy is evident in the slogan on its website: “Don’t just visit the doctor, communicate.”The rationale behind the company’s founding can be gleaned from a statement by its founder, Dr. Blake McKinney, an emergency physician:“Not long ago, my sister-in-law had just given birth. She told me she was worried about her baby’s breathing, so I rushed the seven-day-old, incessantly crying infant to the emergency room overnight. She said she desperately wanted to see her baby but was not allowed into the ER, and asked if I could show her the baby via video... I agreed, and we saw a pink little bundle, sleeping soundly. It was a brand-new life. I assured her that the baby’s respiratory function was fine and that he merely had some nasal congestion. She appeared greatly relieved. I had already answered many questions about childbirth and pediatric illnesses via text messages or social media apps, but at that moment, I truly felt that telemedicine and smartphones would fundamentally transform the services we provide.”Dr. Blake McKinney insists that his company is distinct (as virtually every startup tends to believe), yet CirrusMD does possess several unique features; otherwise, it would not have won the favor of the Venture+ judges.First, unlike traditional providers that charge based on the number of services rendered or the type of procedures performed, CirrusMD charges based on outcomes (reportedly, the company quantifies healthcare effectiveness for billing purposes), much like performance-based compensation in the workplace. This modest innovation has indeed placed the company far ahead of many competitors.Second, its data flows in real time in a continuous loop. Specifically, data moves seamlessly along the entire channel—from local physicians to the platform, and then to the patient’s primary care provider (PCP) or care assistant—ensuring unobstructed information exchange.Most importantly, the company focuses on continuity of care, a text-first approach, and asynchronous workflows. As anyone who has sought medical treatment knows, once a patient finds a doctor they trust, they tend to remain loyal; seeking medical care is not as casual or arbitrary as grocery shopping. Therefore, CirrusMD collaborates with local physicians, insurance companies, and health systems to ensure that patients receive stable, one-on-one, continuous care.

WellpepperA Seattle-based startup, whose corporate culture bears some resemblance to Microsoft’s in its focus on solving real-world problems, differs from Microsoft by targeting bottlenecks in healthcare coordination.The company’s founding was quite serendipitous. In 2012, founders Mike Van Snellenberg and Anne Weiler discovered during their research that local physicians in Seattle were highly inefficient in managing care plans for patients with chronic diseases. Typically, doctors would staple or file printed care recommendations into folders. When a patient’s condition changed, physicians might update the care plan promptly, only to stash it away in a drawer or leave it forgotten in a garage. This disjointed approach to medical care was deeply disappointing, as patients struggled to timely demonstrate their care needs to primary care providers or prove that sufficient effort had been devoted to managing their conditions.In response, Snellenberg and Weiler jointly developed the Wellpepper app, designed primarily to migrate all such paper documents and data onto a digital platform, thereby helping patients access personalized care plans. On the other hand, physicians can use the provider-side application to monitor patients’ adherence to their care plans, making timely adjustments and updates to better align with each patient’s individual circumstances.Prior to its official launch, the platform was already adopted by five prestigious universities worldwide for clinical research, including Harvard Medical School, which studied how older adults could prevent disability risks. Additionally, the company collaborated with Boston University and Brandeis University for two and a half years on a study involving 75 elderly participants, primarily examining the differences in outcomes between home-based care using Wellpepper and conventional methods.Weiler views the Wellpepper platform as “Lego blocks” for physicians, enabling them to assemble customized care plans for different patients and schedule time-sensitive healthcare tasks according to individual patient characteristics. This more personalized approach to healthcare not only enhances communication between patients and care teams—ensuring timely patient engagement—but also helps physicians obtain real-time feedback data.Currently, Wellpepper is mainly used in orthopedics, rehabilitation, trauma and burn care, pain management, and neurological care.

Also announced at the Global Health Conference was the launch of the Boot Camp, an interactive workshop primarily designed for seed- and early-stage entrepreneurs. The initiative aims to provide innovative recommendations addressing the challenges faced by early-stage founders, thereby helping them develop robust digital health service solutions.This year’s Startup Showcase will feature more than 50 emerging companies, as well as early-stage startups supported by global incubators and accelerators. Most participating companies hail from the Canadian Technology Accelerator for Health IT, mHealth Israel, the New York eHealth Collaborative, and StartUp Health.