Tag: Flatiron Health

Top Startups That Will Change Healthcare

By Michael Dehoyos, web developer, PhDKingdom and Next Coursework.

Michael Dehoyos

Technology is advancing at an unbelievably rapid pace and there are new breakthroughs every day for artificial intelligence and big data in multiple industries. They have the potential to completely revolutionize the field of healthcare and some changes are already starting to take place. This article will cover the top startup companies in healthcare that are at the forefront of the AI revolution and what their products and discoveries mean for the medical industry.

Sword Health

Sword Health is the first digital physical therapist that is powered by AI. The company recognized a need in the industry because they noticed that there was always a lack of experienced medical specialists. Even with the number of professionals finishing their medical training each year, there is an increasing demand for them which cannot be met. The AI-powered physical therapist created by Sword Health limits the input of human specialists to elaborating the initial personalized physical therapy journey for each patient. After this step, the patient does their regular exercises at home and their motion tracker will let them know if each exercise was done properly. This saves the patient having to make regular trips to the hospital for physical therapy and allows the specialists to see more people quicker. 

Prognos

Prognos’ goal is to completely eradicate the world of diseases by developing a tool that will identify disease at the onset. This company, formerly known as Medivo, has an ambitious goal which is to use AI and data analysis to predict disease at the earliest possible moment. A tech blogger at Australia2Write, Richard Key, explains why Prognos is so valuable to the medical industry: “Their database can access 13 billion patient records and then AI is used to gain actionable information. The registry helps Prognos figure out which patients are most at risk and develop a plan for treatment that’s personalized to each individual. It can also identify populations at risk and look for gaps in existing care.” 

Flatiron Health

Flatiron Health is aimed at the challenge posed by cancer in the diversity and complexity of the disease. It’s too difficult for doctors or healthcare organizations to deal with on their own so the entire industry needs to be used to make any advancement in this field. Flatiron Health is a company that’s developed an electronic health record (EHR) to unify all the medical data that exists thus far and pull insights from it in order to move cancer research forward at a rapid pace.

Babylon Health

At its core, Babylon Health is a tool that permits patients to consult human doctors or other medical specialists online, through text or video in real time. As explained by a data analyst at Brit Student, John Hunt, “It also has an AI component which is a chatbot that can assist patients with simpler, more straightforward issues. Its capacity extends to making diagnoses and recommending treatment options.”

The goal of Babylon Health’s company is to eventually have a completely self-sustainable doctor powered by AI, so it seems as though the future of healthcare is receiving treatments without seeing a human doctor at any point.

Arterys

Arterys’ focus is radiology and it uses AI to help existing human radiologists. Their oncology AI software is already approved in the United States by the FDA and it actually assists radiologists in measuring and tracking tumors in MRIs and CT scans using a user-friendly, easy browser. The goal with this is to get accurate and quick cancer diagnoses. The AI-powered tool uses what it’s learned to recognize and alert to lung and liver lesions and its accuracy has been shown to equal human specialists.

Modern Fertility

This is another American startup, but one whose focus is on female fertility. Modern Fertility is a fertility hormone test for women to use in the comfort and privacy of their own home. All they need to do is take a finger-prick test and mail it to the company, and then they’ll receive a report approved by a physician which tells them more information about their hormones and a complete fertility profile. It’s partnered with a medical facility in the United States and was founded by former Uber executives.

Healthcare Startups a Mixed Bag, But Success Still In Reach

Guest post by Wendy Dessler of Outreachmama.

Startups are taking the world by storm; it seems like now, you can’t possible go through the day without hearing the word, especially given that many—such as Joyable and Ruby Cup—are making a positive impact in the world. Still, you’d be surprised to find that there’s one industry in particular where startups get mixed results: healthcare. Like finance, law and education, healthcare is a field with one of (if not) the most extensive regulations.

It makes sense, given that lives are literally on the line. Equally as intriguing is that we are talking about a multi-billion-dollar industry (investors gave $16.1 billion to healthcare in 2015 alone), loaded with opportunity for tech startups to become successful while saving lives, improving hospital work flow, and speeding up research. That being said, we’ll examine the ways startups are succeeding in the healthcare industry, as well as why a startling number of them fail.

Startups that Are Doing It Right

Flatiron Health is one of a handful of successful startups that aced the healthcare industry. As reported by Inc., the young startup created a tech platform that shares data collected from cancer patients (information remains anonymous) with research and pharmaceutical facilities. As of now, 260 clinics use Flatiron Health’s cloud-based invention.

By sharing health information more easily, hopefully cutting-edge cancer treatments and medical options can be more readily available.

Majority of Healthcare Startups Are Not Cutting It

While Flatiron Health and other startups succeed in the world of healthcare, a majority are barely making it—if that. Forbes reports that as many as 98 percent of startups funded by angel investors fail in the healthcare industry because of a poorly thought-out business marketing strategy and uninspiring business model.

The Story of Healthcare.gov

Nonetheless, the tech startups that do succeed can make a huge difference in individuals’ lives. As is the case with Marketplace Lite, a young tech startup, rebuilding healthcare.gov from the ground up. As told by The Atlantic, healthcare.gov originally was a failing website. On launch day, only six people were able to sign up for healthcare insurance. The reason for such the low signup numbers had more to do with the site’s poor login features than the number of people trying to sign up.

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