Chicago-based Healthbox kicks off its accelerator program in Cambridge, MA this week with 10 teams from the Boston area and support from Blue Cross Blue Shield MA, Express Scripts, HLM Venture Partners and Long River Ventures. The three month accelerator program will conclude in November with an "Innovation Day" where the teams will share their pitches.
San Francisco-based Rock Health launched its own Cambridge, MA-based chapter earlier this year. The six startups in Rock Health's Boston class have spent the summer working with Harvard Medical School. They will demo their wares later this month.
Healthbox offers its startups free office space, mentorship, and $50,000 in seed funding, in exchange for seven percent equity in the participating startup.
Here's how Healthbox describes each of its startups in the Boston class:
Aavya Health (Boston, MA) has developed software that presents lab test results to patients in an intuitive and engaging format. Aavya uses a clinical algorithm that translates lab results into a “risk score” for future illness, such as heart attack or stroke. The patient can then interact with the tool to determine how modifications in their behaviors change their risk score and access supporting educational resources.
Abiogenix (Boston, MA) offers an intelligent pillbox, ‘uBox’, that reminds, records and restricts when patients take their medication. This adherence information is wirelessly transmitted via a mobile device to the cloud where it is compiled, analyzed and used to notify 3rd parties (ie: physicians, pharmacies, etc.).
Bon’App (Cambridge, MA) is empowering communities with personalized nutrition guidance to achieve healthier lifestyles. Bon’App’s nutritional tracking platform connects users in real-time from their iPhone and/or Android offering both voice and text functionalities. The accessible, efficient search bar allows users to find out the calories, sugar, salt and bad fat in foods through simplistic language and graphical displays.
GeckoCap (Cambridge, MA) is a cap that fits over asthma inhalers with the capability to remind and reward pediatric asthma patients for medication adherence. The cap monitors usage and sends data to a cloud-based service to collect and deploy data along multiple channels, including usage reporting and text notifications to parents. Using the cap requires no change in the child’s behavior and provides a better solution to help parents and providers manage their child’s asthma.
Gweepi (Boston, MA) addresses the cost nursing homes incur to comply with the minimum data set (MDS) required by Medicare and Medicaid. To help strengthen operational efficiency and the accuracy of data collection, Gweepi offers a disposable patch solution with micro-sensors specifically designed for geriatric patients with incontinence. MDS data is collected through this sensor, wirelessly transmitted, reported to both Medicare and Medicaid and can also be analyzed for trends to suggest ideal patient care plans for nursing homes to implement.
Healthy Delivery (Boston, MA) addresses unhealthy eating habits that lead to obesity and other health issues by providing consumers an affordable, educational and easy way to eat nutritious meals. Healthy Delivery’s multi-faceted engagement strategy includes a website that allows consumers to select a week’s worth of meals and have the ingredients delivered straight to their door.
iQuartic (Cambridge, MA) organizes and aggregates real-time comprehensive EMR data from multiple clinical care settings. This robust system gives health care groups easy access to organized and homogenized EMR data from disparate systems and produces EMR derived intelligence through analytics and mining. iQuartic allows early identification of patient trends to facilitate proactive care, benchmarking of clinicians’ performance and improved overall institutional care coordination. iQuartic also provides a tool to improve a provider’s compliance with meaningful use and other reporting requirements.
Smart Scheduling (Cambridge, MA) solves the inefficiency and reduced quality of care problems caused by high primary care no-show rates and compensatory overbooking. Smart Scheduling builds smarter schedules based on machine learning predictions on whether a patient will attend their next appointment. The software promises to normalize clinic volume, which will lead to reduced patient wait times, improved patient and provider satisfaction and increased revenue.
Uprise Medical (Boston, MA) is developing software that presents text, video and animation detailing a patient’s condition and potential interventions. The software is intended to run on a tablet computer and to be shown to patients at their bedside by their doctor. The materials presented will be emailed to patients directly so they can be referenced at home. Uprise Medical allows physicians to educate and empower patients with condition-specific information at the point of care and enables patients to review this information again at their own time and pace.
Yosko (Cambridge, MA) is a mobile front-end application that interfaces with hospitals’ EHR systems to provide on-the-go access to patient records. An iPad app, Yosko interfaces with the EHRs in place and centralizes all the patient data in one efficiency tool. Yosko boasts comprehensive functionality, built-in physician workflow, educational tools and data entry automation.
