More than 60 companies showed off their health data applications at Datapalooza IV this week and Krishna Yeshwant, a partner at Google Ventures, was the MC for a demo session on Tuesday afternoon.
As one of the presenters was fighting with his PowerPoint demonstration and the projection system, Yeshwant answered a few questions about opportunities for healthcare startups with the search company’s investment group. He said that the outlook has changed for healthcare IT startups now that Obamacare is here to stay.
“Now that we have more confidence that healthcare reform is moving through the system, there are more business models that didn’t make sense a year ago that now do make sense, they have a better chance at getting to cash flow or break even,” he said.
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The team is interested in the intersection of health IT and clinical data. He said that the investment group includes people who are comfortable on the clinical side and have deep experience on the IT side.
One man said he was disappointed that Yeshwant was not wearing a Google Glass.
“We are very interested in healthcare applications built around Glass,” he said. “We are looking for applications to the Glass Collective across all industries.”
The Glass Collective was launched in April as a partnership with two Silicon Valley investment firms. The investment syndicate will fund entrepreneurs building businesses around Glass.
Yeshwant is a physician, programmer, and entrepreneur who has been working with Google Ventures since its launch. He has done research in tissue engineering, developed several surgical devices and worked with the technology transfer offices of MIT, Harvard, and Massachusetts General Hospital.
He is advising these Google Ventures portfolio companies: DNAnexus, Flatiron Health, Foundation Medicine, iPierian, One Medical Group, Predilytics, Wingu.
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Anthony Philippakisis is another health-focused partner at Google Ventures as well as a physician, geneticist and mathematician. He is also a fellow in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and in medical genetics at Harvard Medical School.
Blake Byers is a partner and has worked in seven laboratories over the last nine years. His research has spanned antibiotic mechanisms of action, endothelial cell binding, bioimpediance device design, mesendoderm stem cell isolation, Parkinson’s disease modeling, and fMRI imaging of allogeneic brain grafts.
Scott Davis is a partner at Google who has degrees in physics, mechanical and biomedical engineering. He is completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Dartmouth College to develop new optically-based cancer imaging techniques and contributes to the Google Ventures team on a part-time basis.
