Meet your latest class of StartUp Health companies

At first glance, the list of companies in StartUp Health’s latest class looks schizophrenic. A furniture company that embeds sensors in an office chair to inspire employees to manage their health sits alongside a big data platform that uses molecular biology technologies for personalized cancer treatment.

For Unity Stoakes, StartUp Health co-founder, it’s all part of the steady integration of healthcare with digital health. It includes a broad group of companies from a nutrition program geared to people with chronic conditions to projecting what people will look like if they smoke for 20 years using their own pictures.

Tome – that furniture company I mentioned – is a pretty typical example of what Stoakes is talking about. Founded by Massimo Baldini, Tome  is described on Baldini’s LinkedIn page as software for the Internet of Things and venture backed. It is currently in Beta. Baldini’s previous company, Livio, was acquired by Ford. That business builds products and software tools to support smartphone and car connectivity.

“With the mix of software companies with data companies, we get very robust energy and ideas that are really helping everyone accelerate,” Stoakes said.

Although I respect the diversity of approaches to digital health assembled here, April Age’s approach to counseling services for smoking and obesity is nonsensical to me. The idea that an app that makes you look 30 years older and less aesthetically pleasing will steer people away from cigarettes doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like the kind of app that would be used for teasing, not remind themselves of their fragile mortality. When I raised the company with Stoakes, he said: “We look at a technology like April Age and see an extraordinary technology that can be used to change people’s behavior.”

There are 13 companies in StartUp Health’s new class at the StartUp Health Academy, more than one-third are from outside the US. To date, 29 percent of the 84 companies in its Academy are led by women and 28 percent are graduates of accelerators. Its stakeholders have grown to 25,000 and about 42 percent were co-founded by physicians.

Here’s a summary of the companies:

AprilAge – Visualization software for education. It uses your images to project what you will look like after years of sun exposure, heavy smoking and obesity to motivate healthy lifestyle.
Subsector: Patient Engagement
Founders: Alexandra Brown, Ron Estey
Location: Toronto, Canada

Curatio – Brings together patients with similar conditions together on a mobile network.

Subsector: Patient Engagement
Founders: Lynda Brown-Ganzert, Alireza Davoodi, Nima Kaviani

Location: Vancouver, Canada

DocEngage – CRM for healthcare with actionable patient data
Subsector: Practice Management
Founders: Ahimanikya Satapathy, Asha Satapathy, Shankar Banerjee
Location: Bangalore, India

Fit4D – The device uses patient preferences to set up each participant with their own diabetes coach such as group interaction to reading to improve adherence.

Subsector: Medication Adherence
Founder: David Weingard
Location: New York, NY

Jaystreet Technologies – Manages patient appointments for healthcare providers by automating how cancelled appointments are filled , allowing customer service representatives to satisfy patients right in-front of or calling into them.
Subsector: Practice Management
Founder: Tom Dewane
Location: Manitowoc, WI

Kuveda– The company uses the patient’s molecular profile such as bio-markers, proteins, genes, pathways, specific molecules, to develop
personalized therapeutic cancer treatment options.
Subsector: Big Data
Founders: Chuck Gershman, Nirmal Singh, Jasvir Zonobi
Location: San Jose, CA

LifeBio – The company helps users tell their life story to reduce their loneliness and improve their outlook

Subsector: Patient Engagement
Founders: Beth Sanders
Location: Marysville, OH

Meals to Heal – Customized nutritional solutions for people with chronic conditions
Subsector: Nutrition
Founder: Susan Bratton
Location: New York, NY

MedCloud WebClinic from MedCloud on Vimeo.

MedCloud WebClinic – The digital platform lets doctors and dentists share images with patients

Subsector: Provider Solutions
Founder: Dimas Francisco Silva Jr.
Location: Ponta Grossa, Brazil

Medtep – Tracking of medical and lifestyle-related data
Subsector: Patient Engagement
Founders: Pablo Pantaleoni, Jacob Sunol
Location: Barcelona, Spain

Nutrify – A mobile app that’s a diet planning tool for hospitals.
Subsector: Nutrition
Founders: Jackie Arnett, RD, Dr. Yaser Elnahar, James Schuler
Location: New York, NY

Personal Medicine Plus – The company helps patients monitor and enter their water and vegetable intake, create personalized health improvement plans. It also uses customized visual  health reminders to help reduce poor health behaviors.
Subsector: Patient Engagement
Founders: Brandi Harless, Dr. Natalie Hodge, Jay Campbell
Location: Paducah, KY

Tome – Connecting office furniture to corporate wellness using gamification to increase employee engagement
Subsector: Corporate Wellness
Founders: Massimo Baldini, Jake Sigal
Location: Detroit, MI