8 startups changing healthcare

The healthcare industry is arguably the industry that has benefited the most from medical innovation and federal legislative reforms in recent years. Starting in 2014, some technologies that were once only demonstrated in the laboratory, such as 3D printing and gene therapy, will truly begin to be applied to clinical treatment.

When I spoke with eight startup entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council, I asked them the following questions:

What has been the most notable startup idea in the healthcare industry in the past year?

Let’s take a look at their answers below.

1. CareSolver

Statistics show that family care covers 83% of elderly care work in the United States. Each year, these family caregivers spend an average of $5,000 and 1,000 hours providing care for family members in need. If these people's costs can be reduced, it can help Medicare save about $60 billion in losses.

CareSolver is a company that is working to provide a solution to this problem, providing free tools to simplify care work. CarSolver provides customized fox guides for non-professional family caregivers to guide them to provide services on demand. If CarSolver can really achieve its original vision, it would be exciting to save $60 billion.

(Review: Internet Marketing, Brett Farmiloe)

2. Practice Fusion and CareCloud

Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires doctors to gradually adapt to digital medical records, and a series of startups have emerged in this field, such as Practice Fusion and CareCloud. The latter is a professional medical personnel management platform, including a communication and collaboration platform for securely sharing patient data, a cloud system for managing fees and scheduling, etc. The former is a website dedicated to making appointments with doctors.

(Comment: Money Crashes Personal Finance, Andrew Schrage)

3. Bespoke Innovations and 3D printing technology

3D printing technology has gradually become a reality, making it possible to print prosthetic limbs, which has greatly improved the function and appearance of prosthetic limbs and made the production of prosthetic limbs more common.

(Review: Sam Saxton)

4. Big data applications in the healthcare industry

In the past year, big data has provided solutions to many difficult problems in the field of healthcare, and a number of excellent start-ups have emerged, such as Glow, which provides an information network for infertility treatment, HC Pathwyas, which provides solutions for cancer treatment through big data analysis, and Flatiron Health, which provides big data solutions for tumor research and clinical practice (analyzing and tracking multiple indicators of clinical/experimental patients, managing diagnostic data, etc.).

It is expected that with the continuous promotion of big data applications, some old problems that have plagued the medical and health industry will find new solutions.

(Review: Data analysis company Spinnakr, Michael Mayernick)

5. Turntable Health

Awad believes that Turntable is the most promising medical innovation company at present, but there have been few reports on it in China before. Ordinary members can enjoy a variety of services, including visiting doctors, personal fitness trainers, cooking, yoga classes, etc. The degree of innovation is revolutionary.

(Review: GoodBlogs blog, Peter Awad)

6. NextGxDx

Last June, the Supreme Court ruled that companies could not patent specific naturally occurring DNA fragments, although they could previously patent gene fragments associated with specific health risks or drug susceptibility.

Patent restrictions have raised the cost of gene therapy and become a cost barrier for related therapies to move from theory to clinic. Now that the above ruling has been made, the entire industry is encouraged. NextGxDx plans to make a profit by providing genetic tests. You can think of this market as the Amazon market, but it specializes in gene sequencing.

(Review: AtomOrbit, Seth Talbott)

7. Oscar

Oscar hopes to provide a new type of personalized health insurance plan, which will be piloted in New York City first. Through "technology, insurance is made simpler, more rational, and more humane." This platform focuses on easy-to-use user experience and optimized user services.

Oscar will help patients manage their healthcare more easily with the tools it provides. Oscar’s team is backed by experienced entrepreneurs, and we are looking forward to seeing what changes their experience will bring to the healthcare sector.

(Review: Poshly, Doreen Bloch)

8. Integrate technology to advance healthcare

Angel investors who focus on healthcare are very optimistic about the development prospects of this field, as they can establish a better doctor-patient relationship through the power of technology, diagnose the disease as early as possible, and maximize the advantages of professional electronic medical record systems (EMR). Although cutting-edge technology is constantly developing, the technological sensitivity of most ordinary people still needs to be improved. In order to promote the application of technology as soon as possible, patients and the public need to get tangible benefits from it as soon as possible.

The second major trend: compliance-based technology, where patients can get feedback and medical support at any time during their treatment through modern communication technology (such as through voice support system IVR or short message SMS).

(Review: ContextMedia, Shradha Agarwal)

(via tnw translation/fast carp)