StartUp Health, a platform where health transformers, partners, customers, investors, patients, and caregivers connect and accelerate the progress of the health moonshots announced it has added six new companies to its army of Healthcare Transformers.
Every quarter, StartUp Health coaches its army of Health Transformers on how to create value, amplify their story, and ultimately achieve their Health Moonshot. Each company is supported for the entire journey of their business, through multiple stages of growth.
Here is a look at the newest Health Transformers to join StartUp Health’s portfolio of digital health entrepreneurs and innovators:
Sanj Brar
DreamThink
At DreamThink, Brar has built the first FDA-cleared sonic treatment for chronic pain. The treatment uses “binaural beats” – think massage for the brain – to get the brain into a brain wave state that increases brain performance and alleviating depression, insomnia, and chronic pain, all without the use of drugs. Users download the Binaural Dream app on their mobile device and choose sessions to listen to from modules for stress reduction to pain management to sleep. Prior to DreamThink, Brar launched NOGGIN for Nickelodeon, which became the highest grossing app for preschool during his time there.
Andrea Riposati
Dante Labs
Riposati wants to see advanced genetics made accessible to everyone on the planet. His company, Dante Labs, is a global genome sequencing and data analysis firm. While 23andMe, one of the more well known commercialized genetic tests on the market, offers health and ancestry profiles, Dante Labs’ Whole Genome Sequencing offers a deeper dive into wellness and longevity, coding over 99% of the genome compared to around 1% for the exome tests. The company also offers a number of more limited risk-targeted tests. In 2019, the company launched a B2B service, Dante Labs Business, for healthcare professionals and researchers. The new portal combines the advanced analytics and access to genetics expertise that individual customers have come to expect from Dante Labs, with new features and exclusive services tailored for healthcare professionals and researchers.
Health Moonshot: Longevity, Cure Disease
Angela Dayton, MS & John Dayton, MD
MedForums
For Angela Dayton, MS education and health have been the constants amidst a career that’s spanned workforce development at Fortune 100 companies to lifestyle and fitness modelling. In 2018, she pulled from her diverse background to launch MedForums with her husband, John Dayton, MD. The platform is a virtual medical education resource review community focused on improving healthcare, provider to provider. By harnessing the power of crowdsourcing, members receive instant access to customized resource listings based on their occupation, specialty, stage of training, and preferred learning style. “The medical education market is estimated to top $34 billion by 2024,” says Dayon. “MedForums is positioned to become the one-stop platform that healthcare providers use to read, rate, and review medical education resources.”
Health Moonshot: Access to Care
Ulises Chesini
Bitgenia
At Bitgenia, Chesini is pushing the limits of our genetic knowledge. Using bioinformatics and AI, his interdisciplinary team partners with large hospitals to analyze massive amounts of genomic data and clinical records. Their interpretations of the data support early diagnosis and more accurate predictions of diseases. Novartis, for example, uses Bitgenia’s genomic analysis software to diagnose autoinflammatory diseases. “We are in the business of turning genomic data into knowledge that clinicians can use. In order to do that, bioinformatic tools and information technologies are needed,” says Chesini. Currently, the company’s tech is being used across Latin America, including two major public hospitals in Buenos Aires.
Health Moonshot: Cure Disease
Stephanie Canale, MD
Lactation Lab
Dr. Canale has been a practicing family doctor for over 10 years. In the mom-trepreneur’s quest to develop tools for families of all backgrounds, she launched Lactation Lab. Her team of certified lactation experts and toxicology research scientists developed proprietary methods to analyze breast milk with the intent of developing an at-home test to detect mastitis. “As the first company to offer a complete milk analysis, we provide detailed explanations and actionable insights to make a woman’s breastfeeding journey as empowering as possible,” says Dr. Canale. In the future, Dr. Canale envisions a new standard of care for all infants that includes testing milk in order to help mothers determine if supplements are needed, and providing guidance on effective doses to improve infant health.
Health Moonshot: Children’s Health, Women’s Health
