Becker's Hospital Review

18 HEALTH IT 10 Startups to Know for 2016 By Max Green B right minds from a variety of backgrounds are teaming up across sectors to grow startup businesses. In health- care, the stakes for these young companies are oen higher and the challenges are more robust. e number of startups operating within healthcare has ex- ploded, growing 200 percent from 2010 to 2014, according to Forbes. Startups' funding increased by 125 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to Startup Health, a New York City-based accel- erator. Some are backed by angel and seed investors, some are the products of high-profile incubators and others boast a more fledgling background. Tasked with creating solutions to prob- lems that are complex and high-stake, these teams marry clinical, engineering and design expertise. Here are 10 startups that have gotten off to a running start with big plans for the year ahead. 1. Everseat (Baltimore). e day of a medical appointment, any number of things can go wrong. It's not uncommon for traf- fic, weather and other hang-ups to get in the way of making it to an appointment on time, and life's curveballs oen result in can- cellations. Everseat offers a web- and mobile-based platform that aims to overcome these unexpected scheduling snafus. e ability to make appointments directly from a smartphone is a boon for both patients and providers, says Andy Tarsy, senior vice presi- dent of strategy and business development. Patients are empow- ered to find appointment times that work based on their avail- ability and the locations and types of physicians they want to see. ey are also notified in advance if there will be substantial wait times or delays. At the same time, physicians using the app are able to reduce scheduling "waste" and lost revenue opportunities. In October 2015, Everseat partnered with athenahealth's More Disruption Please program to allow athenahealth's physicins to offer the apps' capabilities to their patients. 2. PatientPing (Boston). What if every time a patient stepped into any kind of facility seeking care, your organization received a notification, much like a you'd receive a text message or email? is is the future that Boston-based PatientPing wants to make a reality. e company is in the process of creating a national care coordination network that "pings" participating organizations in real time when patients they know are admitted or discharged. e "ping" includes care team contacts, patients' locations and access to critical guidelines. e PatientPing network currently includes facilities across Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecti- cut and Michigan. e company recently secured $9.6 million in a funding round led by Google Ventures and plans to use this capital to expand its employee base and services. 3. Nightingale Apps (Boston). Developer Nightingale has created and begun testing an app aimed at a sometimes-over- looked part of the care team, but one that has a huge impact on patient outcomes and satisfaction: Nurses. e Know My Patient app offers workflow-specific modules that give nurses and other frontline care workers up-to-date patient information, synced in real time with a hospital's EHR. is frees them from having to return either to handwritten notes or a computer hub to look up information or answer questions. "All of our efforts made since the company's inception [in 2013] have prepared us to launch Know My Patient with testing partners in 2016 and subsequently grow our client base to create an impact in driving safer, more efficient and cost effective care," says Tiffany Kelley, PhD, the company's founder and CEO. 4. DispatchHealth (Denver). ere are a number of startups vying for the much-buzzed "Uber for healthcare" title. Dispatch- Health may be one to claim the name. DispatchHealth offers mo- bile, onsite treatment for simple and complex patients needs. Us- ing its app, customers can summon a clinician to come administer care wherever they may be. e company boasts longer, cheaper visits with providers and shorter wait times than traditional vis- its. "Bringing the house call back with a modern twist was some- thing we felt we had to do," Kevin Riddleberger, chief strategy officer and cofounder of DispatchHealth, told Becker's Hopsital Review in an October interview. Mr. Riddleberger says Dispach- Health is positioned to address major industry pain points, such as the primary care physician shortage, millions of unnecessary 911 transports and potentially avoidable admissions. 5. Healthfinch (Madison, Wis.). Physicians increasingly spend time on computers and with EHRs. It only makes sense to try to safely automate as many time-sucking tasks as possible, and Healthfinch designed a solution for one of those processes: prescription refill requests. So far, more than 1,800 physicians use Healthfinch's soware, and hospitals and practices report saving 15-30 minutes of physicians' time per day. Additionally, many have been able to redistribute the efforts of full-time RNs, whose tasks revolved around handling prescription refills. In a Novem- ber interview with Becker's Hospital Review, Healthfinch CEO and cofounder Jonathan Baran hinted the company has its eye on a number of other processes and workloads it hopes to improve via automated solutions. 6. HoneyInsured (Boston). It all started for HoneyInsured when cofounders Grace Gee and Eugene Wang, two Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard math undergraduates at the time, wrote about a troubling health insurance marketplace trend they'd come across in the journal Technology Science. e students found rising premiums did not seem to correlate with increased consumer benefits and, between 2014 and 2015, the largest insur- ance companies in 34 states increased premiums by more than 75 percent compared to smaller insurers. eir solution is the HoneyInsured website, which integrates with HealthCare.gov's

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