Tag: MedStartr

Competing for the Best New Ideas in Depression Care

Aug 31, 2016• 2

By HEALTH 2.0

Starting around now, you’re going to be seeing alot on THCB about our sister org Health 2.0. Its 10th Annual Fall Conference is coming up Sept 25-8, and everyone who is anyone in the world of new health tech, digital health or whatever you like to call it will be in Santa Clara. First up is a cool crowdsourcing contest from our friends at Medstartr, sponsred by Takeda–Matthew Holt

Next month at the Health 2.0 Conference Takeda will award $50,000 to the winners of the “MDDcare16 Open Innovation in Depression Care Crowd Challenge” to find the best new solutions to fight Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is the leading cause of disability for people between the ages of 15 and 44 and affects approximately 15 million US adults every year. Patients and care providers need new ways to treat and prevent MDD. The MDDcare16 Open Innovation in Depression Care Crowd Challenge invited all U.S. entrepreneurs, scientists, physicians, patients and passionate parties to submit their best ideas to help care for those who struggle with MDD. Nine teams were approved to compete in the MDDcare16 Crowd Challenge Showcase on MedStartr.com where the teams with the most support will go on to the finals. Hundreds have voted already and thousands more will in the next four weeks.

Crowd Challenges are online contests where the top teams are selected by a large community of patients, physicians, nurses, therapists, hospital staff and leaders, partners and investors. The five teams that drive the most engagement in terms of likes, follows, tries, adoptions, pilots, partnerships, support, and investor interest will be invited to take the stage to compete in front of a live audience at the 10th Annual Fall Health 2.0 Conference on September 27th, 2016. Two winners will be selected to share in $50,000 in grant funding.

You can vote for MDDcare16 here and you can buy tickets to the Health 2.0 Conference here.

Hacking HIPAA

Jun 26, 2013• 2

By David Harlow

Join me in attacking an endemic problem in health care today by Hacking HIPAA. I am crowdfunding the development of a new legal form to be used on and after September 23, 2013 to allow patients to opt-in to easier health care communications – a Common Notice of Privacy Practices that is patient-focused. (Text me, please! Email me, please! etc.)

Depending on how much support this project garners, we can attack some related problems as well. Contributions at any level are welcome; contributions at the levels designated on the Hacking HIPAA Medstartr page get you a seat at the virtual table, voicing your concerns that need to be met in the CNPP and in follow-on projects.

I’m working on this project with two leading health care open source software developers, Ian Eslick and Fred Trotter. Check out Fred’s video intro to the project on the Medstartr page – you can find Ian and Fred online via the links on the project page, too.

Here’s an excerpt from the crowdfunding project page:

The Problem

Right now we have the worst of all worlds with regards to patient privacy in healthcare. Patients are frequently subject to sub-standard security and privacy practices AND healthcare innovators are unable to deliver solutions that would be useful to patients because their technical approaches are uncomfortably novel for health care bureaucrats. Patients end up getting poor security and no innovation, the worst of all options. This problem is going to get worse before it gets better, since the new Omnibus HIPAA Rule will make cloud hosting of health care projects untenable very soon.

Continue reading…

Tracking the Social Doctor: Opening Up Physician Referral Data (And Much More)

Nov 5, 2012• 17

By Fred Trotter

I am happy to announce the release of the doctor “referral” social graph. This dataset, which I obtained using a Freedom of Information Act request against the Medicare claims database, details how most doctors, hospitals and other providers team together to deliver care in the United States. This graph is nothing less than a map of how healthcare is delivered in this country.

For the time being, the only way to get a copy of this data set is to support the Medstartr crowd funding campaign for either $100 (for the viral “open source eventually” version of the data) or $1000 (for the proprietary friendly version of the data, that any business can freely “merge” with other data). If you need consulting around this data, you can buy in at the $5k or $10k levels. Also, we are going to have really awesome t-shirts.

I will be writing a more in-depth technical article about this dataset over on the brand new O’Reilly Strata blog (which focuses specifically on Big Data) so I will gloss over most of the technical details here, with a few important exceptions.

First, when I say a “graph” I am not talking about a diagram. I am talking about a mathematical model that supports nodes and connections between those nodes. These are visualized as diagrams, but it is not possible to really analyze large graphs without a database. In this case, the nodes are doctors, hospitals and other providers and the connections between those nodes represent the degree to which they collaborate on specific patients.

Also, despite my branding to the contrary, this is not strictly a “referral” data set, although a fairly large portion of the data do represent referral relationships. Instead, it depicts the degree to which any healthcare provider “works” on a patient in the same time frame as some other provider. This means, for instance, that many primary care doctors are linked to emergency rooms. But this just means that a patient they were seeing was also seen by the emergency room in the same time period. Referral relationships can be inferred from this data, but not presumed.Continue reading…

Alex B. Fair talks Medstartr

Jul 11, 2012

By Matthew Holt

After a lot of pre-publicity, Medstartr is here. Modeled after Kickstatr and other crowdfunding sites, Medstartr is the brainchild of Alex Fair who is not only the founder of FairCareMD but also the generalissimo of the Health 2.0 NYC chapter. Lots has already been written about crowdfunding and even crowdfunding in health care (see this Health 2.0 News article on LumoBack last week), so I thought we’d let Alex describe it in his own words.

Matthew: If I have a company looking to raise money how does Medstartr work? What share of the money do you take?

Alex: Crowdfunding is a little like talking to your in-laws about your healthcare startup. Give a great explanation that works for everyone who has a stake in your project’s success: Patients, doctors, institutions, Big Pharma, HHS, and any partner you want to work with. Then list the rewards they get for supporting your project. Everything from a heartfelt thank you note, to a tax-deductible contribution (through our Partner Cancer101), to a production ready version of your product or service when it is ready to licensing rights for distribution. Next, spread the word through the groups of people who will love your products. Not just the Health 2.0 crowd, but everyone whom your innovation helps. MedStartr helps people fund the innovations in care that people care about and gives them a say in what comes next.

Crowdfunding: This Could Change Healthtech Startup Funding Forever

Jul 9, 2012• 3

By Dave Chase

“The cheapest form of capital is customer revenue”

David C. Jones, Altus Alliance

Crowdfunding has had success in high-tech, where people are eager to explore new models. MedStartr is bringing this concept to healthcare where it can be particularly challenging to get a startup off the ground. They have a twist on crowdfunding to address requirements of healthcare, an increasingly popular way to raise capital for startup technologies and interesting projects.

MedStartr is like most crowdfunding sites that are non-equity. They have plans later to have an equity model once SEC rules are clarified. In the meantime. MedStartr is attempting to hit the sweet spot that crowdfunding poster child, Pebble Technology hit. That is, customers get a great deal and early access to a product. Meanwhile, the startup gets non-dilutive funding and market validation to help it grow to the next stage.