Meet health tech accelerator Blueprint Health’s latest class of startups

A new class of health tech innovators is getting ready to take Manhattan. Blueprint Health, a startup accelerator and co-working space based in New York, is announcing its ten picks for the accelerator’s latest class of startups Thursday.

Part of the Global Accelerators Network, Blueprint Health’s three-month program focuses on health companies looking to find customers and capital, and connects founders with a wide network of mentors, including investors, doctors, health entrepreneurs and other healthcare experts. In addition to the strong community, the accelerator, which is led by founding partners Dr. Brad Weinberg and Mathew Farkash, gives startups $ 20,000 in cash, $ 50,000 in perks and office space in exchange for a six percent equity stake in the company.

This class of startups, which comprises just three percent of the applicant pool, includes a higher percentage of female founders than Blueprint’s last class of startups, as well a strong showing from people with healthcare experience.

“Most of our companies have at least one founder with healthcare experience as we continue to believe that it is important that entrepreneurs understand the healthcare industry and its workflows and payment models if they want to create a sustainable businesses,” said Farkash.

Several companies from Blueprint Health’s first class, which graduated earlier this year, have received funding from top venture firms and angels or other organizations. Meddik, for example, a startup we’ve written about earlier that gives people a more effective way of searching for health information, has raised funding from Founder Collective, Collaborative Fund and others. Aidin, which helps people find continuing care after they leave the hospital, has raised funding from General Catalyst, HLM, Red Swan and other angels. Symcat, another startup we’ve covered at GigaOM that takes a data-driven approach to helping patients figure out what their symptoms mean, won a $ 100,000 prize from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Several mentors are joining the accelerator this summer, including:

Dunston Almeida – Global strategy, M&A and Health IT, Express Scripts
Chris Carter – VP/Provider products, Sharecare
Doug Elwood, M.D. – Director, GMI Strategy and Innovation
Lorna Friedman, M.D. – Partner, Mercer
Bill Hanson, M.D. – Chief Medical Information Officer, University of Pennsylvania Health Systems
Bob Higgins – Partner, Highland Capital Partners
Richa Pande, M.D. – Senior Vice President, Life Sciences, Gerson Lehrman Group
Adam Sharp – Founder, Sermo

Take a look at the full list of startups below (descriptions from Blueprint Health):

Led by Josh Stein, Grant Mitchell, and John Langhauser, AdhereTech helps clinical research organizations (CROs) and clinical trial researchers reduce the cost of study compliance assessment. CROs and clinical trial researchers spend millions every year to send people to trial participants’ homes to assess their compliance with study protocols. AdhereTech provides a patented, connected pill/liquid bottle that can accurately measure if a medication is dispensed, saving CROs and clinical trial researchers hundreds of thousands of dollars per trial.

Led by Clifford Jones and Daniel Cates, Allazo Health helps pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) more effectively allocate dollars to medication adherence programs. AllazoHealth’s Saas based data analytics service predicts the combination of intervention techniques that will provide the greatest outcomes and profitability at a patient level.

Led by Catherine Montgomery, Sarah Moray, Ben Liscio, and Jenny Liu, daisyBill is worker’s compensation billing made easy. Currently it is very difficult for doctors to get paid for services provided via a workers compensation insurer and none of the practice management solutions handle the complexities of worker compensation claims electronically. daisyBill provides a Saas based platform that let’s practices easily submit worker’s compensation claims electronically and is taking advantage of the fact that California is requiring that workers compensation insurers to accept electronic claims starting October 2012.

Led by Jonathan Rothman and Scott Richards, EMBI helps hospitals quickly spot areas where they can increase revenue and reduce costs, specifically down to a department and patient level. Hospitals are losing millions of dollars every year because they are not coding effectively, duplicating services and will increasingly will have payments that are subject to bundled arrangements and meeting quality metrics. Most ERs do not have the time and the technical resources to install a million dollar business intelligence tool like SAP Business Objects. EMBI provides a low cost, easy to implement Aaas platform specifically developed for ERs. The platform has already been deployed at 9 hospitals.

Led by Peter Verrillo, Michael Phipps, and David Kay, EnHatch has developed software that helps medical device and pharmaceutical companies more cost- effectively and comprehensively articulate their value proposition to their customers. Currently medical device companies need to use sales reps to train surgeons to use their products or hire very expensive custom animation studios to create surgery training videos. EnHatch makes it very easy for medical device makers to create 3D surgery animations and deploy them on mobile devices.

Led by Victor Wang and Shuo Deng, GeriJoy helps assisted living facilities and nursing homes monitor residents and improve customer satisfaction and quality-of-life. Gerijoy provides tablet enabled software that enables cost-effective video surveillance and provides patients with a way to communicate with family members and a virtual caregiver.

Led by Jarret Bauer, Rohan Udeshi, and Daniel Priece, Health Recovery Solutions helps hospitals reduce congestive heart failure re-admissions. A 250-bed hospital can lose $ 250K or more in Medicare payments if it is not able to maintain an acceptable CHF readmission rate in 2012. HRS provides a care management service that scores patients on their re-admission risk daily and intervenes when necessary. HRS provides a software platform on tablets that patients take home with them from the hospital and trained health coaches and nurses that intervene with patients when needed.

Led by Dr. Venkat Gullapalli and Nita Nehru, Medikly provides white-label engagement solutions for healthcare educators and marketers, which enables them to better reach, engage and understand physicians. Integrating content management, social media and big data analytics into a single, flexible and intuitive ‘engagement ecosystem,’ Medikly empowers healthcare organizations to expand access and personalize engagement with physicians, increase operational efficiencies, and improve business performance.

Led by Piyush Kedia and Sharad Jain, Symbiosis Health helps employers increase enrollment and retention in their high-deductible health plan and helps employees save money. Employers can save over $ 1,000 per employee per year if they can get them to transition to a high-deductible health plan, but are finding it very difficult to convince patients to do this. Symbiosis Health provides a preferred provider network that they have contract arrangements with and a software platform that allows patients to pay a reduced contracted cash-based price for medical services and apply those payments to their deductibles.

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