Blueprint Health Graduates Nine More Start-Ups: Interview with Founding Partner, Brad Weinberg

The NYC-based accelerator Blueprint Health graduates its second class of start-ups today. The companies are “tackling a wide-range of issues in the healthcare system including medication adherence, workers’ compensation, hospital analytics and readmissions, medical device and pharmaceutical sales and marketing, consumer directed healthcare, and senior care.”

Blueprint partner, Brad Weinberg M.D., tells us that many of these start-ups have already met significant milestones: “Esther Dyson has invested in one of the companies and three of the teams already are generating significant revenue ($500K+).”  The companies include:

• AdhereTech has created a patented pill bottle that measures the exact contents of the bottle (solid or liquid), wirelessly transfers this data to the cloud, and sends tailored reminders to patients if they forget to take a dose. Our solution works for both solids and liquids, has an open API, and captures valuable real-time data to a degree never before seen in healthcare.
• AllazoHealth is an analytics company that solves the problem of medication non-adherence for health insurers and Pharmacy Benefit Management companies (PBMs). Our AllazoEngine leverages existing member data both to anticipate medication non-adherence and to predict the most effective and cost-efficient intervention strategy for each individual.
• DaisyBill is revolutionizing the incredibly inefficient workers’ compensation billing industry where 40% of bills are not paid. DaisyBill is a Saas platform that allows doctors to submit and to get workers’ compensation medical bills paid quickly and efficiently.
• EMBI’s “out-of-the-box” analytics-as-a-service aggregates data from multiple hospital data systems to provide timely, meaningful, and quality information for hospitals to manage their departments.  EMBI’s real-time and retrospective performance dashboards and key metric analytics are being used by hospitals to collect more revenue, manage utilization, risk and patient safety and improve departmental, as well as individual provider performance.
• EnHatch has developed a platform that helps medical device companies dramatically increase their sales and marketing team’s ability to educate and to convert surgeons. EnHatch leverages a surgeon’s own social graph and credibility with a product to help medical device companies engage and sell their products to more surgeons.
• GeriJoy offers a software service for seniors that improves their quality of life and makes it easier to connect with family. The software takes the form of an intelligent pet inside an Android tablet, and provides many of the mental health benefits of pet therapy.  It can also improve safety and labor efficiency in senior care facilities through intelligent audio-visual supervision.
• Health Recovery Solutions has created a mobile platform that helps reduce CHF readmissions by providing hospitals with an early alert system. Our platform creates a care giver and clinician support network which empowers patients to learn, and follow their treatment plan.
• Medikly helps pharmaceutical brands and their agencies develop deeper relationships with healthcare providers by understanding them on an individual level.  Through the Medikly platform, pharmaceutical brands can deliver personalized and relevant content and measure the effectiveness of deployed content on their market share.
• Symbiosis Health is an easy to use web platform that helps employers transition their employees to a high deductible health plan and make sure that they are appropriately using it. We let employees book and pay for medical services (appointments, diagnostic imaging, lab test, and procedures) online, easily compare prices (saving up to 60%), and apply the purchases to their insurance deductible.

We had the opportunity to ask Dr. Weinberg a few questions about Blueprint and its new class:

Shiv Gaglani, Medgadget: Was there a common theme that you were looking for when selecting this round of startups?

Brad Weinberg, MD: Great people and sustainable businesses.  At its core, we look for people that are entrepreneurs at heart.  They are resourceful and efficient.  And above all, have the ability to listen to the advice of others, interpret it and implement it constructively.  We don’t invest in trends or buzz words.  We look at each sector of the healthcare industry – hospitals, insurers, employers, pharmaceutical firms, providers – and try to understand their true pain points.  Companies that can articulate who their customer is, what their pain point is and explain why they would be willing to pay for a solution.

Medgadget: What type of support can these startups expect from Blueprint moving forward?

Weinberg: Blueprint Health is a lifelong community.  Most of the teams stay in New York and we arrange regular get togethers so that teams can continue to share learnings.  Mat [Frakash] and I are in touch with the alumni on a monthly, if not weekly basis, providing them with advice and connections as they pass new milestones, like hiring their first employee, raising institutional capital, and their first large deployment. We also allow all of the teams to work out of our co-working space in our 12,000 square foot Soho loft.  Right now we have over 15 healthcare companies working out of our co-working space.

Medgadget: What are your plans for the next class of med startups?

Weinberg: We are accepting applications for the winter 2013 class now at www.blueprinthealth.org.  The community and resources for the teams in Blueprint Health is growing with every class.  We have great sponsors including Humana, the California Healthcare Foundation, Goodwin Procter, Aetna, Ernst and Young, Verizon and Trinet.  We have relationships with almost every major health insurer, some of the largest hospitals in the country, most major pharmaceutical companies, hundreds of venture capital firms and angel investors, and some of the best healthcare entrepreneurs in the country.  We are excited about the burgeoning healthcare entrepreneurship community in New York and continuing to provide entrepreneurs with the most robust healthcare community to support them.

For more information:

Blueprint Health’s Website…

Medgadget‘s prior coverage of Blueprint Health…