As New York City incubator TechStars seeks new entrepreneur talent for its spring class of 2012, it should look at boosting its health IT numbers.
Doing this would better reflect the growing investment in health IT and its role to reduce healthcare costs.
The application deadline for the class is Jan. 23 and the program begins March 12. The company pairs at least 10 mentors in the local technology industry with each startup to give founders access to both seasoned entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, according to its website.
Among its criteria for the three-month program are that applicants be web-based technology or software companies, though it emphasizes that it accepts companies that don’t fit the mold. It wants companies that have made progress on their prototypes or products and reference them in the application. It wants companies that can show they’ve thought about their business and have “gotten off your butt to do something about it.” Suffice to say, biotechnology companies need not apply — that window is way too small for the industry’s time lines.
Those who are accepted get $18,000 and a $100,000 convertible note from a venture capital company, and access to 75 to 80 venture capital and angel investors. They also get access to TechStar’s respected mentors.
Although health IT investment has grown in recent years, it’s true that this growth comes with some complications, like the conversion of patient records to electronic medical records, data breach concerns and getting diverse systems to speak to each other. Many of these problems could be helped by more innovative health IT.
Conferences offering venues for startups to exhibit, like the ones held last year in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., have helped boost the profile of mobile health startups and will grow in 2012.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
In the past couple of years, TechStars has graduated a few health IT companies in its Boulder, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts classes.
Daily Burn developed a fitness calorie-counter app in the Boulder class and was since acquired by IAC Media. The Boston class of 2010 included Ginger.io — with a mobile app tracking user behaviors to inform clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies. There was also Strohl Medical Technologies, a medical device company that developed a nonintrusive brain scan for strokes that would be available in emergency departments. More recently in its Boulder class was ScriptPad, which provides a smartphone app for small physician practices to simplify the way they work with pharmacists to prescribe drugs for their patients.
