Rock Health Launches Its Fourth Batch Of Startups, As Total Funding For Grads Hits $43M, $900K Each

DSC_03871After five months of testing, iterating, spit balling and pavement pounding, today Rock Health’s fourth class of HealthTech startups took the stage at Demo Day to pitch their fledgling businesses to investors. More than anything, these fourteen startups confirmed that digital health is not just alive and well, but beginning to gain some real traction. (More on that here.)

Like education, the healthcare industry is in the early stages of a massive sea change, and Rock Health’s startups collectively addressed some major pain points for the industry — from leveraging better coordination and patient engagement to lower the costs and simplify the tangled mess of health insurance, to incentivizing healthy behavior and improving secondary care.

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Y Combinator Backs Its First Non-Profit, Watsi; Paul Graham Says He’s “Never Been So Excited” To Invest

Screen shot 2013-01-25 at 12.43.27 PMBack in August, we wrote about the launch of a startup non-profit organization called Watsi, which offers anyone and everyone the opportunity to fund “low-cost, high impact treatment” for those who lack access to necessary care. Again, considering the fact that there are more than one billion people who are unable to afford adequate medical services (or don’t have access to them), Watsi’s mission has enormous (global) implications. And, honestly, it’s a pleasure to see a startup tackling such a big problem, in spite of the fact that it’s inherently complex, thorny and nearly impossible to solve.

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Peter Thiel & Reid Hoffman-Backed 100Plus Unveils Its First iPhone App, “A Life Coach In Your Pocket”

photo 2-30Founded in late 2011, 100Plus set out to tap into the growing popularity of the Quantified Self movement to create a personalized, mobile health prediction platform to help Average Joes like you and me stay active and get healthy. Like some of today’s better known activity and health trackers, like Fitbit, Jawbone’s Up and RunKeeper, 100Plus wants to leverage our ever-present mobile devices to create a more accessible way to analyze, understand and digest our health data — in turn, encouraging us to complete small, healthy actions, while receiving realtime feedback on how those actions affect their daily routines and long-term health.

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The Best Health And Fitness Apps For Your New Year’s Needs

healthtech1The holidays wreak havoc on our bodies, with their mandatory over-indulgence in food as well as family and reminiscences. As we reflect on the year past — its victories and losses — we also begin looking ahead to the next, and in big ways or small, making plans to keep our momentum going.

For many, this involves taking health more seriously, whether it’s losing a few pounds, training for that first marathon, or just being more active. In turn, there’s been a lot of activity in the health space over the last year, as we’ve seen a number of apps and startups launch — or continue iterating — in the quest to help us make healthier choices, get in shape and conquer the world.

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NEA-Backed CareZone Adds Shared Calendars, Goes Mobile To Help Families Better Care For Their Loved Ones

logo-purpleIf you’ve spent any time taking care of children, aging parents or those with special needs, you know it’s hard work. Staying on top of and organizing files, contacts and medications, while coordinating with caregivers and trying to keep all that information secure and private is challenging to say the least. This is where CareZone comes into play. Since launching in February of this year, the Seattle-based startup has been building out a private, secure online service that allows people and families to better take care of their loved ones.

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With 25% Of U.S. Doctors On Board, QuantiaMD Lands $12M To Become The LinkedIn For MDs

QuantiaMD(R)_Logo_StackedQuantiaMD, one of a growing number of companies attempting to build the LinkedIn for the medical community, today announced that it has raised $12 million in venture financing from Fuse Capital. The expansion round is the company’s largest raise to date and brings its total outside investment to $27 million.

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Confirmed: Doctors’ Social Network Doximity Lands Another $17M From Morgenthaler Ventures

7_doximity_logo_transparent_backgroundDoctors social network Doximity has raised another $17 million at a ballpark $80 million valuation led by Morgenthaler Ventures. The company’s series B financing also included participation from returning investors, Emergence Capital Partners and InterWest Partners.

The announcement today follows the company’s $10.8 million series A raise in March of last year and brings the company’s total funding to just under $28 million.

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Watsi Is Using Crowdfunding To Treat The 1B+ Worldwide Without Access To Medical Care

how-it-works-steps-d4d390091859bb475a60d4768832a789Entrepreneurs are inherently risk-takers. But, the tech industry today needs more of the type of risk-takers who go against the grain by actually tackling big, difficult problems. I mean the type of trenchant problems no one likes to talk about and take years to solve.

Like this: Today, we live in a world where more than one billion people are unable to afford (or do not have access to) adequate medical services. Viewed in juxtaposition with the intelligent device/computer you’re reading this from, this fact is unsettling. So, Watsi, is trying to do something about it — by tackling that outsized problem on a smaller and more approachable scale: The individual.

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Meddik Grabs $750K From Chris Dixon, Founder Collective & More To Build A Better WebMD

Screen shot 2012-05-23 at 6.27.19 PMThanks to health-focused startup accelerators like San Francisco-based Rock Health and New York City-based BluePrint Health lacking intimate familiarity with HIPAA or med school experience is no longer a disqualifier for entrepreneurs looking to enter the health space. There are plenty of problems to tackle, and there’s growth capital to be found.

To that point: One of the first graduates of BluePrint’s healthtech accelerator is a startup called Meddik, which wants to combine the Web’s medical data with advice from regular people (and experts) to create a smart repository for health information. To give it the fuel it needs as it gears up for launch later this summer, the startup is today announcing that it has raised $750K in seed funding from a flock of notable angel and early-stage VCs, including Chris Dixon, Nat Turner, Zach Weinberg, Bob Stern, Vivek Garipalli, as well as Collaborative Fund, Founder Collective, Great Oaks, and Silicon Badia.

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