Texas Medical Center and Village Capital are collectively forming a four-day health IT program that will support early-stage digital health companies.
The $100,000 program, dubbed VilCap USA: Health IT 2014, is structured in four “intensive four-day sessions over three months,” with two in Houston and two in Salt Lake City.
Village Capital’s program model allows the entrepreneurs themselves to select the business they feel is most deserving of investment, rather than leaving the decision to investors, analysts or a judging panel.Throughout the process, participating entrepreneurs will assess one another and at the end of the program, the two highest-ranking businesses will each receive $50,000.
VilCap USA will be housed within Texas Medical Center’s new 100,000-square-foot Innovation Institute and will complement TMC’s accelerator program, TMCx, which will launch in March.
The twelve startup companies selected for participation range from software development and mobile technologies, to enhanced communication and patient care coordination. They include:
— 1DocWay, which builds telepsychiatry networks for hospitals to help them expand reach and create new revenue streams.
— AsthmaMD , which hopes to modernize asthma care with a mobile application and a Peak Flow Meter to gauge lung performance.
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.
— BoardRounds, which wants to help coordinate better emergency room follow-up care.
— Hybrent, which builds solutions for hospitals to reduce medical supply expenses, provide patient visibility, and integrate with trading partners.
— iRxReminder, a mobile patient data gathering and monitoring for ensuring patient compliance in research and healthcare delivery.
— Healarium, which enables physicians to capture new billing opportunities with services now reimbursable by Medicare — such as chronic care management,annual wellness visits, and transitions of care — in a more efficient manner.
— NavAssist, a cancer navigation platform that promotes communication and transparency between cancer patients and their care providers.
— Seratis builds a network of providers and family members around a patient in order to better coordinate care inside and outside the hospital.
— Speak MODalities, wich creates software apps that help kids with autism learn speech and language skills.
— Symptify, a virtual doctor visit that uses a patent- pending, algorithmic engine to help users narrow the causes of their symptoms, find the closest place to get care and give a heads-up when going to a facility.
— Uberhealth, which enables children staying away from their parents to manage their elder’s well-being from a distance.
— VerbalCare, which focuses on channeling the patient voice in a way that delivers actionable insight for clinicians.
Village Capital said it has supported 400 enterprises across 30 accelerator programs in nine countries over the past four years. One session already took place and the other is scheduled for late February.
