Last month we announced the latest class of our Launch Lane Accelerator. These eight startups seeking to benefit from tailored mentorship, funding, a vast network, and space at ic@3401, all center around digital health -- a segment of the healthcare industry that is having a uniquely necessary moment poised for continued growth.
But who are the founders behind these companies and what drove them to take their entrepreneurial leap? We sat down (virtually) with the founders of Clinicor, Gray Oncology Solutions, Lara Health, Modal, Neuralert, Opal HTM, PopCheck Tech, and Vital Start Health to learn about their startup origin stories and where they see the Launch Lane Accelerator taking them.
We’ll check back in with these founders at the end of the year to reflect on the progress they have made, and lessons learned along the way.
Anjali Bhatla
Founder, Clinicor
Clinicor is building a digital prescription-only clinic to optimize heart failure patient therapy.
Tell us about your company’s origin story and why you wanted to start it.
As a medical student rotating on the Cardiology service, I was often struck by how often heart failure patients were admitted with shortness of breath and an inability to conduct their daily lives due to being in a heart failure exacerbation. Often, these patients were not on the right medications for their condition, despite an incredible amount of evidence for guideline directed medical therapy. At Clinicor, we believe in keeping patients out of the hospital so that they can lead their best lives. That is why we started Clinicor: to make sure that patients are getting evidence-based treatments.
How would you describe where your company is now on its commercialization trajectory?
Currently our company is in the pilot stage. We are in the process of conducting a pilot with Penn Medicine. We hope that the experience of having patients use our product will allow us to refine our service to best suit the needs of patients. In addition, we have received interest in deploying our product from a couple of other hospital systems and will aim to commercialize after our pilot is complete.
Why did you want to be part of the Launch Lane Accelerator and what are you hoping to get out of it?
Launch Lane Accelerator is a premier accelerator for digital health companies. We wanted to be a part of the accelerator because we wanted to learn alongside other digital health founders. In addition, given our companies ties to the city of Philadelphia we are excited to be able to use our product to better serve patients in the Philadelphia community. Through participating in Launch Lane Accelerator, we hope to gain the tools necessary to commercialize and generate revenue. We believe that the expertise of the Launch Lane Accelerator team will be vital for our success.
Eric Corkhill
CEO, Neuralert
Neuralert is a medical device company offering wristbands that detect and hospital alert staff to the onset of stroke in one-fourth of the time it currently takes, saving lives, improving outcomes, and lowering cost.
Tell us about your company’s origin story and why you wanted to start it.
Co-founder Dr. Steven Messé has had an abiding interest in periprocedural stroke his entire career. He was driven to design a novel approach to rapidly detect stroke after repeatedly seeing acute stroke patients with symptoms identified too late, to provide treatments that could have dramatically improved their outcome. He collaborated with Dr. Weimer, whose expertise in signal processing and diagnostic algorithm development was the key to developing a viable approach to solving this challenge. Together they formed Neuralert Technologies in April 2019. They were joined by two experienced business team members of CTO, Det Ansinn, and CEO, Eric Corkhill, who share the goal to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs for hospitals.
How would you describe where your company is now on its commercialization trajectory?
Our goal is to have a minimal viable product (MVP) by mid-summer which will assist in fund raising. To achieve MVP, we are working on two milestones.
The first milestone is coding software that completes the end user functional arc. This goes from device-based software that can detect a patient’s asymmetry movement, to cloud-based functionality which interprets data sent from the wearable devices which accurately identifies asymmetry as indicative of stroke, to the features of alerting the hospital staff of a possible stroke event to enable more rapid intervention. These three stages, detection, analysis and alerting represent the complete functional spectrum of Neuralert.
The second milestone is developing purpose-built wearable devices. We have been using off-the-shelf smart watches which are not FDA approved and don’t have the prerequisite features needed in a busy clinical setting. Purpose-built wristbands will reflect the design and specifications needed for a go-to-market product. This type of device also allows us to present a device to the FDA for Class II De Novo approval which is essentially similar to our go-to-market design.
Why did you want to be part of the Launch Lane Accelerator and what are you hoping to get out of it?
The money associated with the program helps but at an early stage, companies need to understand how to make intelligent, strategic decisions, how to marshal limited resources of time and money, and how to avoid the multiple dead ends, speed bumps and challenges which confront a company doing something new and unproven. To minimize mistakes and accelerate the path to commercial success requires assistance from experts who have “been there and done that.” The Launch Lane accelerator has an unparalleled track record in helping companies address these challenges and achieve success. We need that help.
André Diamant
CEO and Founder, Gray Oncology Solutions
Gray OS is optimizing oncology workflows so each patient receives high quality, efficient care throughout their cancer treatment.
Tell us about your company’s origin story and why you wanted to start it.
Gray was born from a pair of Medical Physics Ph.D. graduates and a trio of Montréal-based professors. Our vision has always been of an oncology workflow where each patient's journey through their cancer treatment is personalized for them and statistically optimized to provide the best possible clinical outcomes. We quickly realized that ironing out the numerous logistical inefficiencies in the workflow was a crucial first step in driving towards this vision. We began operations a couple of months before COVID, and as COVID began to stretch hospital resources all over the world, it became more and more clear that the problem we are solving is real and will only get worse as cancer cases skyrocket.
How would you describe where your company is now on its commercialization trajectory?
Gray has deployed our MVP (minimum viable product) at a leading hospital in Canada and we're refining the feature set / value proposition based on this constant user feedback. In parallel, we're actively searching for additional early users, both for co-development opportunities and pilot customer relationships. We put a premium on data, and our ability to explicitly prove the value we provide our users. Our existing pilot relationships will help us quantify this impact, allowing us to begin acquiring our first paying customers in the coming year.
Why did you want to be part of the Launch Lane Accelerator and what are you hoping to get out of it?
Launch Lane stood out to me as a no-nonsense digital health accelerator focused on defining and solving problems. This aligned directly with Gray's needs. At this stage: we have multiple mentors and accelerators providing us general guidance. What we need is guidance tailored to bringing our product to market in the US, whether this is through strategy or helping us get in the room with the right people. I was assured very early on that this is precisely what Launch Lane would aim to do.
Launch Lane stood out to me as a no-nonsense digital health accelerator focused on defining and solving problems. This aligned directly with Gray's needs. At this stage: we have multiple mentors and accelerators providing us general guidance. What we need is guidance tailored to bringing our product to market in the US, whether this is through strategy or helping us get in the room with the right people. I was assured very early on that this is precisely what Launch Lane would aim to do.
Erika Dillard
CEO and Founder, PopCheck Technologies
PopCheck Technologies is a Tennessee-based medical device company specializing in remote monitoring technology to eliminate the occurrence of hospital acquired complications following surgical procedures.
Tell us about your company’s origin story and why you wanted to start it.
PopCheck Technologies, Inc developed out of my current postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Memphis in Tennessee called Patents 2 Products, which takes people with my background in healthcare and deep science and provides them the basic tools to take an idea from discovery to early commercialization. At the time I entered the program, I had extensive science and medical training but none in business or in the art of commercializing intellectual property. The timing however was perfect. I was at a professional transition point and as such decided to lean into a desire for entrepreneurship that I’ve always had but didn’t quite know how to pursue. During my neurosurgical training, I created a study that sought to delineate institutional procedures for preventing and monitoring venous clots in high-risk patients such as those with spinal cord injuries. After doing a broader evaluation through customer discovery in other patient populations, a common theme was revealed which emphasized discrepancies in how we as healthcare professionals interpret signs and symptoms of complications such as venous clots particularly in patients who have just undergone a surgical procedure or who have experienced traumatic injuries. This interpretation can be fraught with variability which is heavily influenced by our state of mind at the time of interpretation and by our underlying biases. This was such a pain point for patients who went on to develop venous clots and was the sole reason why, early on, I pivoted from a focus on prevention to creating a means of monitoring for the development of clots that is AI-driven.
How would you describe where your company is now on its commercialization trajectory?
We are in the early stages of commercialization, currently preparing our first methods patent application for our technology and performing proof of concept studies utilizing our primitive prototype. Concurrently, through the research centers at our partner institutions we are performing a retrospective analysis looking deeper into associated factors that contribute to prolonging the diagnosis of venous clots in the inpatient setting as well as a comprehensive cost analysis which will aid in validating our proposed revenue model.
Why did you want to be part of the Launch Lane Accelerator and what are you hoping to get out of it?
As a physician entrepreneur, I favor processes that rely more on my background in science because that is what I’m most familiar. That level of comfort can be thwarting for any business but particularly in healthcare when there are so many stakeholders and restrictions that can prolong the timeline for getting a technology to market. When the ultimate goal is to get technology to those who really need it in order to improve outcomes and save lives, I must be pushed to tackle those milestones that will achieve this in a time and resource efficient manner. Launch Lane has proven to deliver this value for its entrepreneurs through demonstrated expertise and ability to establish key connections to move our ventures forward. At a time when our method for establishing relationships and creating important interactions have been altered, to see companies in healthcare tech thrive so well because of the program is justification for me. I aim to follow this same path with PopCheck.
Martina Janeckova
CEO, Lara Health
Lara Health is building the first remote patient monitoring leveraging automation and AI to maximize physicians' revenue.
Tell us about your company’s origin story and why you wanted to start it.
I built one of the first remote patient monitoring platforms five years
ago, way before there was an incentive for independent medical practices to implement remote care. It allowed me to truly understand the
customers' needs, experiment with various models and build a network of
contacts. I am a strong believer there is a better, more efficient way
for doctors to work and get paid, through a better user experience and
automation software. My co-founders are experts in their respective fields, and it's been such a fantastic journey so far. We hope to continue on this trajectory as part of the newest Launch Lane cohort.
How would you describe where your company is now on its commercialization trajectory?
Quite simply: we have a product and we have paying customers.
Why did you want to be part of the Launch Lane Accelerator and what are you hoping to get out of it?
We are a Philadelphia based healthcare company, so Launch Lane is a really great
match for us. We are excited to tap into the network and expertise the
accelerator team brings to the table, to help us build better and get to
our next milestone faster.
Juliette Mann
Co-CEO, Modal
Modal is a 3D communication platform designed to enhance education for real world application.
Tell us about your company’s origin story and why you wanted to start it.
We were inspired to start Modal in our first year of dental school, where we experienced the inadequacies of utilizing 2D images to learn about patient healthcare in a dental setting. Upon further research, we also found that our professors were frustrated with the available 3D education technology in meeting their goals for student education. Modal was founded by students for students: working to modernize classroom education and bring real life human anatomy to digital devices.
How would you describe where your company is now on its commercialization trajectory?
Our presentation software redefines modern education by bringing real-life human anatomy to the digital
classroom, and thus far we have been focusing on dental schools as our initial market. We have made significant traction in our early commercialization plan through securing letters of intent with five dental
schools across the nation. In addition to free pilot programs, these LOI’s include a transition to paid
courses upon completion of the free demonstration. As part of the early feedback from our clients, we
have been working to expand our course offerings in order to meet the needs of graduate and
professional students at every level. Although this progress is significant, our company is still early on in
our commercialization trajectory as we have much room for growth with regards to the number of
paying customers, content offerings for individual subscribers, and integration to core classroom
communication.
Why did you want to be part of the Launch Lane Accelerator and what are you hoping to get out of it?
Most importantly, as first-time founders, we were looking for hands on mentorship and business acumen as we begin to transition from developing our product to commercialization. The Launch Lane Accelerator has an impressive reputation in the Philadelphia startup community for their proven track record of success amongst their cohorts. This community has been instrumental in our growth thus far and we are thrilled to be part of the Science Center's network.
Close to a million women suffer from mood and anxiety disorders, even psychosis, during pregnancy and postpartum. But less than half get any treatment at all! I know because I was one of them. I have experienced the stigma, gaps and barriers to treatment firsthand and am passionate to address this age-old problem in an innovative, far more effective way that can be accessible to all who need it.
Kirthika Parmeswaran
CEO, Vital Start Health
Vital Start Health is a University of Pennsylvania's Penn Center for Innovation startup, developing the first maternal mental health platform using Virtual Reality and AI.
Tell us about your company’s origin story and why you wanted to start it.
Close to a million women suffer from mood and anxiety disorders, even psychosis, during pregnancy and postpartum. But less than half get any treatment at all! I know because I was one of them. I have experienced the stigma, gaps and barriers to treatment firsthand and am passionate to address this age-old problem in an innovative, far more effective way that can be accessible to all who need it. I am supported on this by our co-founder, Dr. Chuo who has seen this play out as a NICU physician. He is well aware of the impact of the parent's well-being on the outcomes of the child. He believes that our platform is a great tool to address this.
Vital Start is a Penn Center for Innovation company that has developed the first maternal mental health platform using AR/VR with low-cost headsets for health equity and wider adoption. We originally began with a focus on clinical decision support for neonatal health, specifically, neonatal abstinence syndrome (babies born to mothers with opioid addiction) but pivoted based on deeper product-market fit discovery. Beginning with maternal health as a beachhead, our strategic vision is to expand to other acute and chronic areas and other modalities of personalization or targeted treatment. Our goal is to be the personalized virtual medicine company for mental health, going after the $200 Billion of opportunity.
How would you describe where your company is now on its commercialization trajectory?
We are off to a great start this year! We have completed an initial clinical study with successful results at a leading Children's Hospital NICU. These results will enable us to further develop early efficacy results for a soft launch this year and sales by end of next year. We have an aggressive commercialization goal given the trifecta of explosion in mental health - $201 Billion, the MOMNIBUS act, that will fund maternal mental health and the growing “femtech market,” currently worth $50 Billion. Over the years, we have developed great stakeholder relationships with our customers. We also have a strategic partnership with a pregnancy app provider and a software provider. We remain well poised to enter the market with our science-backed innovative, effective treatment for maternal mental health.
Why did you want to be part of the Launch Lane Accelerator and what are you hoping to get out of it?
The Launch Lane (previously DHA) accelerator with Aron Starosta’s leadership is well-known in Philly as a great channel to scale a startup in digital health, especially in the early stages (pre-seed/pre-revenue). Vital Start is ready to take on commercialization and Launch Lane provides us with the monetary boost and mentorship we need, along with a flexible program for targeted advisory that will help us get a head start and circumvent estimated blocks along the way. Vital Start is excited to be selected for this cohort!
Luck and opportunity are funny things. This was never supposed to be anything more than a one-year university project researching medical asset tracking strategies– and really, I was probably never supposed to be involved in it. But I joined up and at some point, we realized we had a hold of something special.
Connor Roberts
Founder, Opal HTM
Opal HTM is devoted to improving hospital efficiency and effectiveness by using our patented system of wireless sensor modules and data analytics to reshape how medical equipment is managed.
Tell us about your company’s origin story and why you wanted to start it.
Luck and opportunity are funny things. This was never supposed to be anything more than a one-year university project researching medical asset tracking strategies– and really, I was probably never supposed to be involved in it. But I joined up and at some point, we realized we had a hold of something special. It morphed and grew into a series of projects and then a small patent portfolio. Very gradually and then all at once, I found myself transitioning from a scientific investigator to a commercial one – forming hypotheses about customers and markets alongside those about sensors and algorithms. Now Opal HTM is a company and product that I’ve built my life around, and it’s on the verge of transforming how hospitals manage the medical equipment we all rely on. They say that hard work brings good luck, but I think the opposite is also true. I’m lucky to have happened upon this opportunity to build something meaningful, and it’s now a joy putting in the hard work to bring it to fruition.
How would you describe where your company is now on its commercialization trajectory?
Opal HTM is at an exciting inflection point where our product and business model are solidifying and the work ahead of us is more and more about execution. We know who our customers are, what they need, and we’re confident that we have the right technology and team to get it done. Our focus now is on demonstrating efficacy, delivering value to early adopters, and preparing to respond to market feedback.
Why did you want to be part of the Launch Lane Accelerator and what are you hoping to get out of it?
We wanted to be part of Launch Lane because we knew of several companies who came up through the accelerator and are now thriving, and because we were drawn to it as a healthcare-focused program with all of the specialized knowledge and resources that come along with that. We also like how the accelerator is run and the constructive approach the Launch Lane organizers take. To be honest, we applied a year ago and didn’t make the cut. But because they took the time to go over reviewer feedback with us, we knew exactly where we needed to improve in order to have a shot the second time around. Now that Opal HTM has been accepted, we’re looking forward to having guidance in setting critical milestones and having the necessary resources to make achieving those milestones possible.
