Think crowdfunding isn't for healthcare? Think again. Join us for a Masterclass with Jim Iversen, CEO & Co-founder of Sen-Jam Pharmaceutical. A long-time member of our StartUp Health community, Iversen reveals how he raised over $3 million through platforms like Red Crow and WeFunder. In this episode, you'll learn: Crowdfunding platforms best suited for health startups Strategies for launching a successful campaign Creative investor incentives, including fractional patent...

Tired of overblown claims about AI in healthcare? This episode dives into the real, impactful ways AI is transforming patient care. Join us as we chat with founders in the StartUp Health community who are using AI to improve healthcare for patients and providers: Jerrod Ullah, HealthTalk A.I.: Hear how his experience as an ICU nurse fueled an AI platform that boosts engagement for both patients and providers. Kavi Misri, Hibiscus Health: Discover how their end-to-end solution...

In this week's StartUp Health NOW episode, we’re talking about work. Specifically the digital health workforce, and we’re talking with the one and only Polina Hanin, Senior Principal & Head of Development at Aequitas Partners. Here at StartUp Health, we had the pleasure of working with Polina for several years, and it's unlikely anyone has a better grasp on the digital health ecosystem. She’s worked with hundreds of founders and executives across healthcare. When she moved over to...

As a healthcare startup, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t have the capital to hire the right people, build your product, and survive a long sales cycle, you’re unlikely to have a huge impact. To put it simply, raising funds has been challenging for health startups over the last couple years. In this StartUp Health NOW episode, we dive into the realm of funding challenges – and despite the hurdles, we bring you tales of hope and inspiration from two founders who...

On today’s StartUp Health NOW episode we're bringing you an excerpt from a recent StartUp Health Masterclass featuring Lee Shapiro, the managing partner at 7wireVentures. Very few people, if any, have the experience and market understanding that Lee Shapiro has. As we’ll get into in the conversation, he’s been an investor as well as an operator, guiding Allscripts and then Livongo. More than that industry expertise, however, we appreciate Lee’s ability to put work and life in perspective....

This week on StartUp Health NOW, we have again handed over the microphones to two members of our Health Moonshot Impact Board and having them interview each other. At one end of the table we’ve got Margaret Laws, CEO & President of HopeLab, former Director of Innovations for the Underserved at CHCF, and Founder of the CHCF Health Innovation Fund, and at the other end of the interview table is Shirley Bergin, Senior Advisor at ARPA-H, Former CMO/COO of TEDMED, and Advisor to Ellipsis...

Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW! We think it’s fair to say that when people think of StartUp Health, they think about entrepreneurs and founders. Over the last 12 or 13 years we’ve supported more than 500 health tech startups and nearly 1000 founders, many of whom have been featured on this show. Perhaps less well known is what happens behind the scenes at StartUp Health. In this episode we pull back that curtain a little bit, particularly as it pertains to our Health Moonshot Impact...

Because of the nature of the work we do at StartUp Health, we’re often dealing with bleeding-edge ideas and technologies. Just last week on the show we talked to a founder creating what could be the smallest implantable devices on the market. Others are working on molecules that could cure diseases. But there’s another kind of innovation that we’re equally passionate about at StartUp Health. That’s the kind of business model innovation that brings the best care and technology already...

When it comes to health technology, often the next big thing is really, really small. Our guest on the show this week, Dr. Will Hendren, has seen personally that when it comes to implanting a medical device in the body, size matters. Dr. Hendren spent decades as a surgeon working with rescue devices like pacemakers, which themselves have evolved from being the size of a pack of cigarettes to being smaller than a triple A battery. It doesn’t take a degree in biomechanical engineering to...

At StartUp Health, we get the pleasure of talking with many, many founders of healthcare startups. It’s a perk of the job, because each founder, each new idea, inspires us and gives us hope that we’re on the cusp of some major breakthroughs. Then reality sets in, and we’re reminded just how hard it is to go from an idea – even a brilliant one with validation – to commercialization and broad use. It’s one thing for a founder to find a single clinic to use their platform or device, but a...

In January, StartUp Health launched the Alzheimer’s Moonshot with support from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and Gates Ventures. The Alzheimer’s Moonshot is an invitation to Health Transformers, Alzheimer’s funders, foundations, advocates, and innovators, as well as leading startups and research teams, to unite in pioneering comprehensive, collaborative approaches to Alzheimer’s disease. The Alzheimer’s Moonshot Community is powered by StartUp Health and our Health...

Welcome back to StartUp Health NOW, the podcast where we hear directly from the entrepreneurs and innovators who are transforming health. Typically on this show we talk to founders of startups. We’re all about understanding what’s new and next in health, and that often means talking to the people who are in the early days of creating a product or business. Most early-stage startups – healthcare or otherwise – have one thing in common. They need money. It takes a long time to get a...

This week, we're talking about gamification in healthcare. Gamification has been a popular buzzword in tech and in health, but it just means using elements we associate with games in non-game contexts. It means capitalizing on the motivations we find in games through things like progress updates and level-up badges to change behaviors and get us to do things that are going to be good for our health. Today on the show, we're talking to two founders who are gamifying the healthcare experience...

Since 2020, Charles "Chuck" Henderson has led the American Diabetes Association (ADA) as CEO. In 2023, he joined StartUp Health's Health Moonshot Impact Board, a unique, multi-disciplinary group of stakeholders passionate about advancing health innovation. On the Health Moonshot Impact Board, Henderson joins top thought leaders like Dr. Toby Cosgrove (former CEO, Cleveland Clinic) and Sue Siegel (former CEO, GE Ventures). In this StartUp Health NOW episode, StartUp Health's Logan Plaster...

On this week’s StartUp Health NOW episode, we're talking about the future of gut health with Jeff Glueck, CEO & Co-founder of Salvo Health, and Swathi Arulguppe, CEO & Founder at BetterMeal AI. There's no doubt gut health is having a moment. For a long time, health issues in the gut, like irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn's disease, were met with outdated pamphlets about diets. The result was millions of people suffering in silence with painful, life-limiting conditions. It's not...

Ten years ago, Irem Rami became one of the first Fellows to join StartUp Health. In her role she helped vet the very first companies to join our community. That was back when it seemed very audacious indeed to have a goal of supporting 1000 healthcare startups. A few years later and we’ve now welcomed 500 startups into the community and are still going strong. In that time Rami moved on, went to business school, and is now a principle health investor at Norwest, a $3B multi-stage fund. We...

On this StartUp Health NOW episode, we’re talking about wasteful spending in healthcare. This is one of those topics that’s hard to put in perspective. The institute of medicine says that 30% of healthcare spending could be categorized as wasteful, putting the total tab north of $750 million. It could be a trillion dollars. Health insurance premiums are up 7% year over year, according to Health Affairs. Analysts point to inflation as a strong cause, but this nearly trillion dollars in...

Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease. It’s the most common cause of dementia, impacting around 55 million people globally. It’s a leading of death for the elderly, but mortality isn’t the worst thing about Alzheimer’s disease. Before they die, this disease robs people of their minds, taking away the interests and knowledge that made them who they are. In a tragic way, it steals people’s identities. That’s the challenge, and it’s a big one. Thankfully, there are incredible entrepreneurs and...

At StartUp Health we’re all about what’s new and what’s next in health, and that often means talking about cutting-edge technology. But sometimes the most radical way to improve is also the simplest. One example? Our food. This week, as we head into Thanksgiving in the United States, we’re talking about the role food plays in managing not just our weight and fitness, but actual chronic diseases. Some people use the term 'Food as Medicine,' and the more research we do, the more ways we find...

When Adonica Shaw founded Wingwomen, it was to address a very specific, personal need. Shaw had experienced a difficult pregnancy – preeclampsia turned an otherwise healthy pregnancy into a medical emergency. Afterward she looked around and there was no one to talk to about what she’d been through and nowhere she felt she could go for advice. So she built a safe space to talk about issues around women’s health and maternal health. It was all virtual at first and provided curated...

According to some estimates, out of the HHS, nearly 50% of kids have experienced some kind of mental health challenge. And not just anxiety about an upcoming test or depression over a breakup, but persistent feelings that interfere with daily activities. Health innovation companies have been on the case for years, including many from the StartUp Health community. They're tackling the science – like what's the best way to treat mental health challenges in teens – and they're also tackling...

Our episode this week was recorded during our StartUp Health Studio interviews at the recent HLTH conference in Las Vegas. At the event, a hot topic was how artificial intelligence, specifically generative AI, is going to fundamentally shift healthcare delivery. AI can help us comb through mountains of information and take action on data points that were previously hidden from view. But many people have a serious concern – even a fear – that AI will degrade the doctor-patient relationship and...

This week’s StartUp Health NOW podcast episode is a conversation with Health Transformers Alexandra Dantzig and Erin Frankel, the co-founders of Jetsweat. As you'll hear, their company started out as a fittech marketplace for boutique fitness brands, helping these small independent fitness companies create high-quality digital content and reach new audiences. Recently, however, Jetsweat – which joined StartUp Health in 2022 – has made moves into the realm of value-based, whole person care....

There's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in business: “You can't manage what you can't measure.” It's a quote attributed to Peter Drucker, the famed management consultant.‌ If business leaders such as Peter Drucker are right, not being able to measure the effect of an action would make it impossible to know if we should be doing more or less of that action – or if we should be doing it at all. But if the saying is true in management, it's even more true in clinical medicine in...