Health IT, Touched by Angels
By
John Pulley
A California venture capital firm has selected 11 finalists in a nationwide contest to find the country's most promising health IT startups. Now all the finalists have to do is present their cases to 200 venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs next month in hopes of persuading someone to finance their dreams.
The contest is sponsored by Morgenthaler Ventures of Menlo Park, Calif., which has invested in more than 300 IT and life sciences companies. The firm is bringing together the rest of the investors for its invitation-only meeting with the 11 health IT firms, scheduled for Sept. 22 in Mountain View, Calif.
The finalists, selected from among 117 applicants, are divided among those needing seed money and those offering preferred stock to investors, called Series-A funding.
Seed-money finalists are:
- Careticker of Miami, with a platform to help patients plan in advance of a hospital or outpatient procedure.
- EyeNetra of Cambridge, Mass., with a mobile eye diagnostic allowing patients to take their own eye test, get an eyeglass prescription and connect with eye-care providers on a cellphone.
- Skimble of San Francisco, with a mobile wellness coaching application.
- SurgiChart of Nashville, Tenn., with a mobile, cloud-based network for surgeons to exchange case information.
- Telethrive of Los Angeles, with an audio and video conference application for medical consultations.
- Viewics of San Francisco, with a cloud-based hospital analytics and business intelligence application.
Series-A funding finalists are:
- AbilTo of New York City, which develops and delivers online mental health programs to managed-care members and enterprise workforces.
- Axial Exchange of Raleigh, N.C., with a pay-per-performance program that enables providers to coordinate care across different settings.
- Empower Interactive of San Francisco, with an e-learning platform for psychotherapy methodologies.
- Jiff of San Francisco, with an iPad platform used by doctors, nurses and others to educate patients.
- YourNurseIsOn.com of New Haven, Conn., with a bi-directional text, phone and email health-care provider employment placement system.