As healthcare accelerators evolve, they are inclined to make some changes as they get feedback from investors and participants. Tigerlabs Health held a demo day for its inaugural class today — a group of six health IT companies that presented consumer-facing, business-to-business and business-to-business-to-consumer models in presentations with rock ‘n’ roll segues courtesy of Wham and Neil Young.
The Princeton, New Jersey, program is an expansion of its Tigerlabs University summer accelerator for student entrepreneurs that has focused on technology. It also runs a co-working space, Tigerlabs Commons.
In an interview with MedCity News, Tigerlabs Managing Partner Bert Navarrete talked about some of the tweaks it is making to its programs. It’s increasing the time frame for its three-month health IT accelerator track to six months in which companies are admitted through a rolling recruitment process. It’s also adding an innovation track focusing on the needs of two partners — Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital — with a July 2 deadline. It’s also starting to co-invest in companies with venture capital firms.
Here’s a look at the six companies in the program:
CareTree is led by Carl Hirschman and is looking to plug communication gaps and work flow inefficiencies with a portal that would replace the paper-based systems at caregiver network companies with electronic records. Doctors, caregivers, families and patients can view the network to keep track of medications and electronic messages record patient family health history. It was invited to make a pitch to Harvard Business School’s Alumni Angel Network in New York.
Clue is a Berlin-based company keen to get a piece of the menstruation tracker app market.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The Dent Board has developed a software-as-a-service specifically for dentists to boost revenue and help them create a way to better manage their practices.
LifeVest Health’s platform uses the idea that financial incentives improve performance and applies it to employer health plans. Users are encouraged to set health and fitness goals for themselves and raise, say $50, from family and friends or shell it out themselves. In return, if they make progress in meeting their goals, their personal “health and wellness stock” rises and they get money from the company. If they fail to meet their goals, individuals lose the cash they put down.
New York City Technology in Medicine is developing consumer-facing mobile health apps. It claims that it’s developed the first noninvasive test to assess drug and alcohol abuse. It works by using a smartphone’s camera and LED to take a series of pictures that tracks how fast the pupil contracts.
PLoM.io is short for the Public Library of Models. It’s developing a crowdsourcing platform that would help life scientists collaborate on modeling for different health needs such as charting the spread of a pandemic or predicting the effectiveness of a drug. It’s working with groups like Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
