OrganizedWisdom Health Blog

"The great thing about internet companies is they can change the nature of the way business is being done..."

Forbes Video Interview with OrganizedWisdom Director Jerry Levin and CEO Steven Krein

OrganizedWisdom director Jerry Levin and CEO Steven Krein recently sat down with Forbes writer Maureen Farrell to speak about OrganizedWisdom, StartUp Health and the importance of innovation in the health and wellness sector.

"The great thing about internet companies is they can change the nature of the way business is being done and to apply that in the health and wellness space is terribly important," says Levin.

Read the full article here. Watch the video interview below.

“Not enough people are being incentivized to go into health and wellness space,” says Jerry Levin.”We’ll take the linkage from the government and corporations to build a platform for entrepreneurs to get financing and mentorship.”

“The Internet is a disruptive technology,” says Levin. “I’ve spent a lifetime seeing it transform and disrupt the media business, but why hasn’t there been that disruption taking place in terms of health and wellness?” 

StartUp Health, the strategic initiative announced last week by OrganizedWisdom, the Deparatment of Health and Human Services and US CTO Aneesh Chopra at the Health Data Initiative Forum, is getting set to support meaningful innovation in the health sector! Click here to find out how you can join the movement to support the health and wellness ecosystem.

 

StartUp Health Announcement at Health Data Initiative Forum (Video)

OrganizedWisdom CEO Steven Krein Announced StartUp Health with US CTO Annesh Chopra and US Department of Health and Human Services at the Health Data Initiative Forum in Washington DC yesterday. Watch the launch presentation here.

 

Read the launch Press Release
Take the StartUp Health Pledge
Sign up for StartUp Health Roundtables 
Visit StartUpHealth.com

U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and OrganizedWisdom Announce StartUp Health

Program Aims to Close the Health Gap by Inspiring, Educating, and Providing Resources for Health and Wellness Entrepreneurs to Build Long-Term Sustainable Businesses

NEW YORK, NY and WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwire - Jun 9, 2011) - Today, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Health Data Initiative Forum, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and OrganizedWisdom announced StartUp Health, a strategic initiative designed to improve access to capital, education and resources for health and wellness entrepreneurs. Chaired by former Chairman and CEO of Time Warner Inc. and current Director of OrganizedWisdom Jerry Levin, StartUp Health aims to close the Health Gap between entrepreneurs, private investors, corporations, universities, foundations and other stakeholders committed to accelerating meaningful health and wellness innovation. StartUp Health also announced today that it will join the Startup America Partnership, a private sector initiative working in conjunction with the White House to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation. StartUp Health's goal is to help entrepreneurs create, fund and build sustainable health and wellness companies by improving access to:

• Long-term support, guidance and mentoring
• Data, technology, tools and other required resources
• Sector-specific investors and stage-appropriate capital
• A collaborative community of like-minded people and organizations
• A talent pool of people dedicated to meaningful innovation in health and wellness

"StartUp Health has a long-term vision of what needs to happen to help foster a vibrant health and wellness system in this country by energizing entrepreneurs," said Jerry Levin. "By building a detailed roadmap for health and wellness entrepreneurs, we aim to provide access to everything and everyone they need to significantly increase their chances of creating a sustainable business. Any entrepreneur who dreams of meaningful innovation in health and wellness deserves access to this roadmap and the critical resources that can reduce the barriers to success, and we intend on making sure that happens."

"I'm honored to participate in the HHS and IOM's Health Data Initiative Forum to share in the exciting announcement of StartUp Health, the latest Startup America Partnership collaborator to unleash new market opportunities with the launch of the StartUp Health Roundtables and the StartUp Health Pledge initiatives," said Aneesh Chopra.

StartUp Health Roundtables

The first initiative for StartUp Health will produce a series of StartUp Health Roundtables, hosted in partnership with organizations like the Startup America Partnership and HHS, to bring together entrepreneurs, investors and organizations to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities in developing a roadmap for health and wellness startups.

The first StartUp Health Roundtable will take place in New York City on July 13th, 2011 and will be moderated by Startup America Partnership CEO Scott Case. The Roundtable will also be broadcast live over the web and viewers will be able to email and tweet their questions for participants. The second StartUp Health Roundtable, called DC to VC, will be hosted by HHS CTO Todd Park and will focus on creating targeted engagements between senior administration officials and entrepreneurs, investors and students. For those interested in requesting an invitation to one of the StartUp Health Roundtables, please visit startuphealth.com for more information.

"Driving American entrepreneurship is critical to creating jobs and sustaining our nation's global leadership," said Scott Case, CEO of the Startup America Partnership. "The health and wellness sector is full of entrepreneurs creating innovative new companies, and we are thrilled to host the StartUp Health Roundtable to encourage and support the growth of scalable companies in this industry."

The StartUp Health Pledge

The second initiative, called TheStartUp Health Pledge, has been developed to demonstrate the commitment of those participating in the health and wellness startup ecosystem as an entrepreneur, mentor, investor, business or organization to help elevate the standard of care in America.

"By creating the pledge, we will begin to connect the dots and organize all of the like-minded people and resources dedicated to transforming health and wellness," said Steven Krein, CEO of OrganizedWisdom. The initial entrepreneurs, investors, corporations and government agencies that have pledged their commitment to encourage and participate in the health and wellness ecosystem include U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Startup America Partnership, OrganizedWisdom, Jerry Levin, entrepreneur and philanthropist Esther Dyson, Digitas Health Co-founder Linda Holliday, Health 2.0 co-founders Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya, and health technology startup accelerators Rock Health and Blueprint Health.

One of the most inspiring examples of a government agency that has visibly pledged its commitment to the health and wellness startup ecosystem is the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. HHS, under the leadership of Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been focused for the last year on accelerating the use of publicly available health data through HealthData.gov.

"Encouraging entrepreneurship in health and wellness is a key priority of HHS, which is why we've opened up vast amounts of federal consumer health data for public use," said Todd Park. "We hope that others will take the StartUp Health Pledge to help accelerate momentum for innovation and entrepreneurship to improve health and wellness for millions of Americans."

For more information on the StartUp Health, the schedule of StartUp Health Roundtables or to take the StartUp Health Pledge, please visit startuphealth.com.

About StartUp Health

StartUp Health is a strategic initiative started by OrganizedWisdom to inspire, educate, and provide resources for entrepreneurs to build sustainable health and wellness companies. StartUp Health aims to close the "Health Gap" between entrepreneurs, private investors, corporations, universities, foundations and other stakeholders committed to accelerating meaningful health and wellness innovation. Learn more at startuphealth.com or @startuphealth on Twitter.

About OrganizedWisdom

OrganizedWisdom, founded in 2007 in New York City, is on a mission to close the "Health Gap" by inspiring doctors and health experts to leverage new technologies to elevate the standard of care in America. The company provides a mobile toolbox for health experts designed to help people before, during and after a doctor visit and offers people access to free expert health alerts on any health and wellness topic. OrganizedWisdom's investors include leading health, technology, and business minds: Esther Dyson, Roger Ehrenberg, Jason Finger, Linda Holliday, Jerry Levin, Jeff Stewart and Artists and Instigators Ventures. Learn more at organizedwisdom.com.

See original press release: Marketwire

OrganizedWisdom Launches Two Health Apps at Health and Human Services Health Data Initiative Forum in Washington DC

 

Innovative new Apps make government health data more accessible to health professionals so they can help people before, during and after a doctor visit.

America is experiencing a unique moment where multiple trends are converging that finally make rapid innovation possible in health and wellness. Over the past 50 years, innovation in health required an extended period of time and an incredible amount of capital - as well as access to top researchers and scientists. Today, however, recent advances in mobile software development combined with access to vast amounts of freely available public health data have converged to provide entrepreneurs and companies like OrganizedWisdom with unprecedented access to powerful ingredients needed to foster large scale innovation in health and wellness.

This year, the White House through the HHS's Health Data Initiative released a treasure trove of previously locked away national health and wellness data, thus opening up the floodgates for new possibilities in our mission to close the "Health Gap" and making it easier for health professionals to leverage new technologies to improve the standard of care.

In May, in preparation for today’s Health Data Initiative Forum in Washington DC, OrganizedWisdom sponsored an internal company hackathon to challenge our team to come up with new and innovative uses for data now available at HealthData.gov. Using newly-released health data, the team created two apps that integrate with and enhance the company’s Mobile Toolbox for doctors and Expert Health Alerts for patients. The first app, How Healthy Is Your Community?, is a tool that integrates directly with a doctor's mobile toolbox and lets their patients easily search to find the health risks in their area allowing doctors to educate their patients about location-specific health risks. The app presents a clickable Google map by county and provides charts and graphs showing the distribution of health risk factors. Want to know the leading cause of death in Westchester County or how many incidents of lung cancer occurred in Houston, TX, How Healthy Is Your Community? makes it easy to search this data. The second app integrates MedlinePlus’s database of health topics to allow people to receive important health information on more than 800 important health conditions. We’ve integrated this information into our Expert Health Alerts to provide people with a digest of health information when they sign up for a health alert on these important topics.

It is truly amazing to see what other start-ups are also doing with the data now available at HealthData.gov. This is very much just the beginning!