
Ideas We'd Like to Fund - mahlie
http://rockhealth.com/2014/03/ideas-wed-like-fund/
======
pxlpshr
Rock+Health and Startup Health are awesome launch pads for health startups.
I'm happy that the health-focused accelerators are gaining more attention (in
the industry).

A big challenge for most accelerators (ycom / techstars / et al) is that the 3
month cycle is not usually long enough for entrepreneurs (new or experienced)
to wrap their head around the depths of healthcare, muchness negotiate a sales
contract. If you already have experience in this industry, awesome, but if you
don't – prepare to spend 3-6 months just navigating the complexities. "Who
pays?" is a very interesting question that you should consider in detail, and
the answer is usually not the Doctor and almost never the Patient.[1]

In any event, we need more talented entrepreneurs working on some of these
issues and not fast-following to be the next cool photo/chat app. I recognize
a lot of young technologists don't understand why healthcare sucks as a
consumer because your body is in great shape, but spend a few weeks in a
hospital and you'll find plenty of opportunities if you have the fortitude to
deal with the mountain of bs.

Disclaimer: I'm a former consumer / financial guy turned health tech
entrepreneur, and participated in TechStars last year.

[1] The consumerism of healthcare is an interesting topic. I do believe that
retail clinics will become as popular as a Starbucks and a shift to a
consumer-pays model will likely compliment our new healthcare system, but I
don't see it happening for the 60-70% of the population suffering from serious
chronic diseases. They just can't afford it.

~~~
wmkn
> In any event, we need more talented entrepreneurs working on some of these
> issues and not fast-following to be the next cool photo/chat app...prepare
> to spend 3-6 months just navigating the complexities.

Totally agree. The healthcare domain is incredibly difficult, especially for
small companies that aim their product at medical professionals (speaking from
experience here).

\- As you said, who pays? There are a lot of different stakeholders in the
purchase of a medical device: medical professionals, insurance companies, IT
department, hospital risk management, etc. You need to consider them all.

\- The healthcare market is incredibly conservative. If you have a fantastic
product, but it requires changes to established processes, you need a really
good story before someone will even consider purchasing it.

\- The healthcare market is used to having products actively pushed to them.
Standard marketing (e.g. nice website, advertising, etc) will not bring you
customers. You have to keep in mind that medical professionals are used to
"study" trips to locations with a nice beach.

\- Medical devices (hardware, but also software) require CE certification, FDA
approval or other forms of certification. Which can be expensive and time
consuming.

~~~
rficcaglia
Plan for 3-6 months just for contract approval, AFTER a yes.

Also be very careful about IP when collaborating. Budget lots for lawyers,
especially when selling to academic centers.

------
beat
These guys should come hang out in the Twin Cities startup scene. Due to the
presence of some health care giants (United Healthcare, Medtronic, etc), we
have a lot of health-oriented startups, a lot of domain-specific talent, and a
lot of interest in our local investing community.

As we've been growing our startup community here, one thing that interests me
and a lot of others is how we can turn our concentration of Fortune 500 and
big enterprise companies here into an advantage. Health care seems to be the
best lever, to me.

~~~
malay
Malay here from Rock Health—you're absolutely right. We have two close
partners in the area (UnitedHealthcare and Mayo both) and come out once or
twice a year.

I'd love to connect with the community next time I'm in the Twin Cities. Send
me an e-mail (in profile or malay@rockhealth).

~~~
pash
You should also get in touch with John Fein [0], who's running the
Sprint/Techstars Accelerator [1] in Kansas City. They're doing mobile health,
starting (today, as it happens) with ten companies.

Like the Twin Cities, KC has a growing health-tech scene, with Cerner and a
slew of new companies. There are also more veterinary biotech companies here
than anywhere else in the world, and many of them are looking for ways to
bring their technologies into the human-health market.

0\. [https://twitter.com/johnfein](https://twitter.com/johnfein)

1\. [http://sprintaccelerator.com/](http://sprintaccelerator.com/) or
[https://twitter.com/SprintAccel](https://twitter.com/SprintAccel)

------
doctorcoin
_> 72% of internet users said they looked online for health information in the
last year_

This is incredible, but in my view, the problem is that people are usually
looking for answers, which they can't be given due to lots of regulations. And
no one wants to spend $100 or more on a doctor visit for a concern that turns
out to be absolutely nothing. Yet oftentimes that's the only choice people
are, essentially, given. Not only they have to spend money, but also time. And
they only get information from one source (a doctor they visit).

That's why we created [http://coinmd.org](http://coinmd.org) We've got some
bad publicity and some good publicity, which, I think, is a good sign in
general. But I honestly hope that projects like ours will flourish, as they
open up opportunities to lower the cost of healthcare and make it accessible
to virtually everyone in the world.

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arbuge
I'm not sure how to put my finger on it, but the problem that causes a regular
appendicitis patient like to me to emerge from an American hospital with a
$54,000 bill is one that needs solving.

~~~
trevoragilbert
What about (off the top of my head), a hospital that is funded by a network of
companies. It only treats people who work for these companies, and the
companies all foot the bill based on # of employees.

The companies own the hospital and run it at break-even, and make sure that
all costs are low.

I could see something like this working in urban centers where there is a high
concentration of large, highly-profitable companies. Silicon Valley, NY,
Boston, LA.

It goes way beyond just fixing your appendicitis (which, by the way, that is
one massive bill), but should (theoretically) still fix that problem.

~~~
jacalata
And they can easily make sure costs are low by firing employees with regular
appendicitis! Brilliant!

~~~
trevoragilbert
I said the idea was off the top of my head!

It could be a double-blind. Hospital doesn't know which of the companies you
work for, and the company doesn't know which employees are costing them money.

~~~
marcosdumay
Do not link employment with the health system. There is no way for that to
lead to a good outcome.

~~~
trevoragilbert
Why not? We link other things with employment for cities where there's a
large, concentrated number of employees. Towns with fire departments owned by
the companies.

~~~
politician
Do we really need to make things harder for self-employed folks? That
insurance is in any way linked to your employer is already complete folly. The
car insurance, single-payer, and exchange-based models are all fundamentally
better than the "no one knows how much anything costs" model of employer-
sponsored health care.

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robg
RockHealth is a great organization with great, passionate people. They will
help you navigate the various stakeholders in healthcare like no one else can.
They also accept applications on a rolling basis - no deadlines and an answer
in 30 days. They also don't take equity to participate though you can choose
to take on a convertible note.

~~~
MicroBerto
First time I've heard of them to be honest. What are their boundaries? Do they
stay within "professional health" areas, or do they have expertise in
nutritional fields as well?

~~~
markhelo
What expertise do you specifically mean? Btw, Labdoor was in our batch, they
test nutritional supplements and tell you whats really in them.

~~~
MicroBerto
Oh excellent, that's pretty much what I wanted to know. Labdoor's exactly in
our field and I've been meaning to reach out to them anyway. Thanks.

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ape4
I suspect most of the $700 billion is wasted because of insurance companies -
not paperwork.

~~~
clavalle
I often wonder how much programmer time has been spent munging data into a
form that insurance companies' archaic systems find palatable?

~~~
daigoba66
Not a whole lot I think. Technically speaking they are rather straightforward
and easy-to-program transaction specs. And it's only recently that electronic
health insurance transactions have been mandated. The problem is actually in
the broader domain of healthcare billing and "coding", a problem which
software can facilitate but probably not solve. In my opinion anyway.

~~~
rficcaglia
billing and coding is not a technical problem, per se. many public domain
coding schemes exist, and there are lookup tables to map across each. lots of
open source tools to help.

the problem is redundant inefficient systems subsidized by your tax dollars.

at hospitals i have seen literally 5 overlapping emr systems for a given
service that require MDs to cut and paste data that is inaccurate, stale, and
irrelevant to the context of the patient encounter. then they print out a pdf
and mark it up with pen. THAT is the real record they use since the emr is so
bad

emrs were designed by programmers, not by clinical users. very poor
interfaces. 10 clicks just to do anything. need a new feature? 2015 release is
just around the corner.

too bad we just spent billions of US tax dollars subsidizing emr systems that
are DOA (many physicians i know put their records on box or google docs, hipaa
be damned - just to get their work done!)

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kliao
Regarding idea #1 - "We’re looking for an iconic consumer company to reinvent
health information."

This would be great. I wish there was something out there that provided
objective up-to-date interpretations of health-related medical publications
applicable to everyday living. For example, conventional knowledge vilifies
saturated fats, but new research seems to indicate otherwise. Numerous diets
exist all clamining to be optimal and backed by science. What scares me is
finding out 20 years from now, all efforts at maintaining a healthy lifestyle
were completely misdirected and in fact, unecessary or even detrimental. What
are some ways to accomplish a completely unbiased health guide? It could be
based on meta-analysis of academic publications, crowd-sourced, or expert
peer-reviews...just something that weighs the reliability of research, points
out any deficiencies, and fights the propagation of sensational headlines like
"Red meat kills you!" anytime some journalist misinterprets a dubiously
controlled experiment on lab rats that shows a statistically insignificant
correlation between two variables.

~~~
chestnut-tree
The NHS website does a pretty good job. It's obviously aimed at the UK
populace, but presumably the info is accessible to anyone with an internet
connection - [http://www.nhs.uk/](http://www.nhs.uk/)

Their "Behind the headlines" blog picks apart popular health stories reported
in the (UK) press -
[http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx](http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx)

I can't say I would necessarily trust a consumer company for health
information, but that's probably an attitude shaped by having a state-funded,
not-for-profit health system.

------
richardjordan
I don't get this. Is it a VC firm? They seem fuzzy on details. "We provide
startups with funding" then a list of VC partners. Are they one of those 'we
help you get funding' companies who actually do the opposite?

Does anyone know, as I've never heard of them.

~~~
malay
We're a full-service seed fund. Our roots were as an accelerator, but over
time, we have realized that we continue to support our portfolio companies
long after they "finish" at Rock Health.

Our equity investment model is very similar to the YC/Start Fund relationship.
KPCB, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Mayo Clinic fund the companies we select with
a $100,000 convertible note, at the same terms of an existing/pending seed
round, or on flexible terms up to an uncapped note. We're different from YC in
the sense that Rock Health itself takes no equity in the companies. We try to
be extremely entrepreneur-friendly, and ultimately, the convertible note is
entirely optional. For companies that don't want the note, we write non-
dilutive grants up to $20,000.

In terms of whether we help our companies get funding (or not), our companies
have raised more than $100M[1] from investors including Collaborative Fund,
Felicis, First Round, Floodgate, Founders Collective, Founders Fund, General
Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, NEA, The Social+Capital Partnership, SV Angel, True
Ventures, and USVP, just to name a few (for context, our first cohort of
companies finished at Rock Health in November 2011).

[1][http://rockhealth.com/about/annual-
report/](http://rockhealth.com/about/annual-report/)

~~~
rficcaglia
Of course, researchers/clinicians can get SBIR and/or NSF grants. From my
perspective, funding is not the criticsl path problem.

Lack of a ROI focus and accountability for spending at an organizational level
at care delivery organizations is the problem.

Consumer apps can sidestep some of the backwards thinking in care delivery,
but if you follow the cost drivers systemically, real innovation that moves
the cost needle can be as simple as reducing redundant labor costs, or
increasing patient self-service at care delivery interfaces. Nothing that
can't be done with circa 1996 web technologies.

Unfortunatelty, human/political organizational barriers to such changes
protect entrenched interests and prevent game changing innovation.

That said, I am seeing some minimal attention to real change as accountable
care/quality metrics become more front and center due to MU2. Let's hope it
doesn't degrade into more subsidies for entrenched vendors to maintain the
status quo.

------
orionblastar
You should come to St. Louis Missouri. We do a lot of medical research here.
Check out the universities, you will find cutting edge tech there.

If you make an app that uses sensors attached to a smart phone it would make
it a lot easier for doctors to diagnose problems. Stuff like taking
temperature or blood pressure and then recording it into a database would be
great starts.

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waiquoo
I'm working on the genomic sequencing problem at a hardware level (actually,
it's pretty cool, I just got the prototype working and no one else has
anything close in terms of transduction mechanism or fundamental stability).

What are the chances of RockHealth funding something like that?

~~~
malay
We would love to hear more about it. We don't have any sequencing companies,
but have multiple hardware and medical device companies in our portfolio. We
don't shy from capital-intensive businesses.

~~~
waiquoo
Fantastic, we are currently finishing up some of the basic research. After
wrapping that up, we will be searching for the funding source/incubator that
offers the best fit. I know one of the founders of one of your portfolio
companies and have only heard good things.

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davak
I'm a doctor with a working application that is currently being used in a
couple of hospitals. It might fill one of these areas. I would be interested
in submitting. Is there a particular format for the business plan? I've never
done official tech entrepreneur stuff.

~~~
malay
Visit rockhealth.com/startups/submit/ and let us know if you have any
questions. We host office hours every week or I'm happy to walk you through it
via e-mail.

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trevorhinesley
Has no one mentioned
[https://www.healthsherpa.com/](https://www.healthsherpa.com/) ? It's pretty
much the cleanest healthcare information site I've seen.

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stephenhuey
Our startup is already working on the first one. We connect people to
healthcare providers and services, and we're in the process of partnering with
the #1 most recognizable company that provides health information to
consumers. Join us in Houston, home to the largest medical center in the
world!

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ebuchholz
CompassMD [http://compassmd.com/](http://compassmd.com/) is addressing #1 and
are getting great traction from what I hear.

~~~
CompassMD
100% true! We believe that there is a trifecta for finding and choosing
doctors: Cost, Quality and Compatibility. The compatibility component has been
largely ignored... that's where we shine.

~~~
CompassMD
We were even selected as one of four winners at the Innov8 For Health Idea
Expo last week [http://innov8forhealth.com](http://innov8forhealth.com). Does
compatibility between you and the doctor matter?

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dome82
What about ideas on medical tourism? Is that something interesting and
valuable for people?

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reillyse
The introductory paragraph of the article makes my head hurt.

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crixlet
not to mention, proximity to Mayo which has been doing some pretty cool stuff
w/r/t imnovation

