Health IT, Hospitals, Startups

Smart thermometer is the favorite at Cleveland Clinic & StartUp Health’s venture challenge

Mobile health company Kinsa continued its victory lap around the startup competition circuit at the […]

Mobile health company Kinsa continued its victory lap around the startup competition circuit at the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit today, taking home top honors at the summit’s first ever new ventures healthcare challenge.

Eleven startups from the StartUp Health Network, which co-presented the challenge with Cleveland Clinic, pitched to a panel of judges that included the Clinic’s CIO, Dr. Martin Harris, angel investor Esther Dyson, HIMSS CEO Steve Lieber and Steve McHale, CEO of big data company Explorys.

The favorite among the judges, and it seemed among attendees as well, is trying to track the spread of human disease by mapping it using mobile tools, starting with a smartphone-enabled thermometer and app.  The company’s low-cost thermometer attaches to a smartphone and uses the device’s electronics to determine a person’s temperature. Supplementing aggregate temperature and symptom data with other health data from CDC or Google Flu, for example, Kinsa wants to provide insights to users about what’s going around schools and communities.

Kinsa is backed by IA Ventures and has raised $52,000 through an Indiegogo campaign.

In close second came Aver Informatics, a health IT company also working with big data, but doing it on the enterprise side by addressing changes in payment structures around the growth of bundled payments. Its solution aggregates data and helps organizations design episodic payment bundles modeled around the way care is actually being delivered. Ultimately, its goal is to improve quality of care and remove costs from the healthcare system.

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