Digital health made an appearance on Shark Tank tonight and got treated like the ultimate piece of chum. You would think that a couple of high-tech doctors offering the future of mobile technology in healthcare would just blow away the likes of Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary, right?
Instead, the investors on Shark Tank – a reality show for investing in startup companies – said the founders of RoloDoc delivered “the worst presentation ever.”
Another company setting the world on fire selling cake balls at 7-Eleven blew the doctors out of the water (and got a Shark Tank investment).
Drs. Albert Amini and Richard Amini clearly passed on checking out a Rock Health seminar or MedCity’s startup tips. The premise of RoloDoc is one you’ve heard of before: create a credible physician directory and mobile health app patients can use to reach out directly to a doctor that fits them perfectly. The site would become like a LinkedIn for physicians, and patients would use RoloDoc to upload and display their medical records.
“What we’re trying to do is bring social media and the social network to the medical profession,” Albert Amini said.
And with that, it went downhill. Cuban noted the presentation never demonstrated how RoloDoc leveraged social media and the doctor duo couldn’t effectively explain how they would convince doctors to join. They also couldn’t address why patients would upload their information, since many health systems have electronic medical records, the thorny issues of protecting patient privacy, and how they would verify the physicians.
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.
They said they would make money through online advertising and could keep practicing medicine and running this business. “In this day and age we can do it with electronics,” Richard Amini said.
Cuban closed them out: “I am going to do this eye to eye face to face because you’re doctors: Worst presentation ever.”
Will any credible digital health company have the courage to show its face on The Tank ever? Will Shark Tank even consider them?
O’Leary, the black-hat character of the show, waxed scientific: “Protein is never wasted when a death occurs … I don’t mind sacrificing a couple doctors if it means the next couple doctors can make me money.”
