Learn It Live's Alere-branded offering.
Healthbox has announced its seventh class of health startups and its second class in its home city of Chicago. The new class is sponsored by State Farm, and a number of hospitals and health systems in the midwest are partnering with Healthbox, namely St. Louis-based Ascension Health's Chicago-based health ministry; Alexian Brothers Health System; Community Health Network of Indianapolis; and Ridgeview Medical Center of Minneapolis. Ascension has worked with Healthbox before on previous classes.
“The launch of the second Chicago program brings Healthbox back to its roots. We started in January of 2012 with an unbelievably supportive community from Chicago and across the Midwest. We’re excited to bring the community together again to share our journey and hear from another impressive cohort of health tech entrepreneurs,” Nina Nashif, founder and CEO of Healthbox, said in a statement.
As the choice of partners might indicate, Healthbox has a strong focus on provider problems with its current class, focusing on startups building tools for hospitals and health systems. Here's the seven companies joining Healthbox for its windy city homecoming:
CeutiCare aims to address medication adherence for hospital patients with chronic conditions. The company will station a pharmacist in the hospital with access to CeutiCare's PC software, the CeutiCare Intelligent Clinical Guidance System. The pharmacist works with chronic patients on choosing medications and dosages and creates a personal health record that can be used to track and follow up with the patient. Patient information is stored in a CeutiCare database which is HIPAA compliant.
PatientConnector is a software-as-a-service offering to help hospitals deploy custom-made, patient-facing mobile apps. On its website, PatientConnector advertises a three-part aim for its customers: to improve population health, increase patient satisfaction, and reduce costs.
Health and wellness is the first vertical for Learn It Live, a company focused on bringing video education sessions to groups via the web. Experts lead classes on topics like nutrition, stress relief, and disease management for organizations, employee populations, and the general public. The startup has already worked with some big healthcare groups like Alere, the CDC, and the American Heart Association. Sessions are branded for the company and include interactive features like group chat and a virtual whiteboard. Wellness sessions are $750 a month for 500 users.
Ludi is working on improving compliance and tracking return-on-investment in physician-hospital agreements. The startup's first product is an app called DocTime Log, which allows doctors to track their hours without paper. That makes it easier for hospitals to keep track of doctors' hours and avoid legal and regulatory violations.
Opternative is developing an online eye exam to save patients the time and money of going to a clinic. Because of different screen resolutions, online and mobile eye examinations are more complicated than they might sound. Another company pursuing that avenue, Visual Art and Science, is marketing its software to pharmaceutical companies for clinical trials rather than directly to consumers.
Hospital patients can often benefit from community resources not affiliated directly with the healthcare system. Purple Binder's goal is to collect those resources and make them available to doctors in a continuously updated, searchable database. Once doctors find the right programs for their patients, they can inform them via text or email, all without leaving the database.
Quietyme uses sensors to monitor noise levels, temperature, and humidity in hospitals to help hospital administrators learn how well their patients are sleeping. Better sleep improves both hospitals' patient satisfaction scores and patients' recovery. QuietyMe also has an eye on residential, commercial, and hospitality verticals.
