Angels in the Crowd, Angels in the Cloud
By
John Pulley
Emerging health IT companies soon will have another avenue for raising capital--a crowdfunding website called MedStartr.
On MedStartr.com, companies will post videos explaining their business and product to potential angel and venture investors, according to an article published Tuesday by Medcity.com. Alex Fair, who heads New York’s Health 2.0 chapter, tells Medcity.com that the model is similar to that used by Kickstarter.com and RocketHub.com.
The website will focus on companies developing health-care innovations, and health IT figures prominently in the two examples cited in the Medcity article: EndoGoddess, which is trying to fund a clinical trial of a diabetes-management application; and Avado, which allows patients to schedule medical appointments and communicate electronically with their doctors.
“I’m really intrigued by the crowdfunding model,” Fair tells Medcity. “We see crowdfunding as part of the continuum of funding; we don’t think of it as a be all-end all. … But we can certainly help some companies gain traction.”
Fair says on his LinkedIn profile that MedStartr will launch later this month.