Don't you love the internet? I'm in Melbourne, Australia but thanks to the magic of Twitter and email, here is my interview with Andrew Ringer, founder of ProHealth/ Professional Performance. Read on!

What is ProHealth/ Professional Performance, and how will it impact or disrupt the medical industry?

Where can we find out more about ProHealth/ Professional Performance?

Visit our website at http://www.professionalperformance.ca or connect on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ProfPerformance

Cracking the code of the venture capitalists’ vault of money is one of the enduring enigmas for about every entrepreneur at some stage of their existence. For many, the stress involved in securing funding can be completely overwhelming and many falter when they finally get some time in front of a VC. An evolving part of my work is helping to prepare star-ups for VCs as well as helping VCs to assess healthcare startups.

In this post I’m going to share my top five tidbits of knowledge for health entrepreneurs/ startups to better understand venture capitalists. So let’s get going!

1.They're human too!

VCs might not be entrepreneurs necessarily like you but they are businesses like you. They want to minimize their risk and enhance their opportunity to make a profit. It might sound like common sense but many startups treat VCs as judge, jury and executioner. Always remember that the guys sitting opposite you work for a business that has bills to pay, debts to fulfill and investors to satisfy. Does what you do make their lives easier?

2. Whose money is it anyway?

If you’re talking to a venture capitalist from a large firm often, unless they’re senior execs, that person probably isn’t going to be investing their own cash into your company. The way VC funds work is that they’re made up of two sets of players:

1. General Partners
2. Limited Partners

It’s the limited partners who are investing the vast majority of the money and they tend to do this on behalf of very sophisticated institutions such as investment banks, funds of funds, pension plan managers and the odd ‘super-rich’ or, technically speaking, high net worth individual. Why’s that important? Well, because these guys are involved in dictating the terms of how and where VCs invest the fund money. There can be limitations which simply mean that VCs can’t meet your desires and that it takes considerable growth and profitability on behalf of the startup to make sure that the VCs get a healthy return since most of capital gains and profits will go to the limited partners.

3. You can choose too…

When a venture capital fund invests in you it’s in their interests to make sure you have every opportunity to grow and become extremely profitable since they now have a stake in you. They’re incentivized and will often take a position on your board.

If you’re pitching to VCs, remember that these people are going to become your partners for perhaps 5-10 years and beyond and that’s a major new partner to be dealing with. You need to make sure this partnership works in your interests too. Do your research and ask them about the resources they can commit to you whether it’s a network of experts, investors or office space. Make sure you know all the possible opportunities and benefits.

Have they invested in healthcare before? Why now? Who have they invested in before and what happened to them? How did they help them? Do they have any links to the healthcare community? Make sure you prepare your questions.

4. Prove it

When it comes to healthcare, and by that I mean any product or service that affects the way doctors practice medicine or the way patients interact with them and their interventions, then you better have some supportive data. And no, I don’t mean forecasts or exploitations or crystal ball predictions. You need facts to support your claims, but it doesn’t have to be a large scale double-blind, randomized controlled trial.

Talk to some local community or hospital doctors, ask them to pilot and give their honest opinions. Talk to patients and ask them to do the same thing. If you get as few as ten of each to try your product or service for a sustained period of time then that’s a good place to start from and will show your commitment to reducing uncertainty for VCs.

5. Back yourself

You’ve prepared your financials, spoken to the doctors, the patients, the payors and the providers. You’re a technical expert and you know your product inside out. You’ve got a business plan and a business model mapped out and you know you have an answer to a real problem. Well then, now it’s about finding the right guys who can work with you to make sure it becomes reality!

Remember what happens in a given meeting isn’t necessarily a damning verdict of what you’re doing since there are so many unseen issues to deal with in the back-rooms of VC firms. Sometimes, their hands are tied because of their limited partners and they can’t help you even if they want to! There are always options: maybe an accelerator is in your destiny...

Got a question or comment? Tweet me @Saif_Abed

THIS POST ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON http://www.hitconsultant.net AND HAS BEEN REPUBLISHED ON HEALTHYSTARTUPS.COM WITH THE PERMISSION OF DR SAIF ABED

DR SAIF ABED

Founding Partner at AbedGraham Healthcare Strategies Ltd

Dr Abed is a doctor, healthcare startup consultant and VC/M&A advisor based at the University of Cambridge. His firm AbedGraham Healthcare Strategies focuses on working with early stage startups to develop them into clinically actionable, financially lucrative enterprises & with VCs to identify healthcare investment opportunities.

Dr Mark Friedman, Cofounder FSH Health 

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Website https://www.fshealth.com
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/FirstStopHealth
Twitter https://twitter.com/firststophealth

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Fig is a mission-driven company and an iPhone and Android app. My co-founder Bart  and I started Fig with aspirations to create a life-giving culture for our team and empower customers to transform themselves and their lives. After asking ourselves, “how can a product support personal transformation?”, we found ourselves in coffee shops and living rooms, where over a hundred people shared their stories with us. In these stories of victory and struggle, we noticed how differences in people’s approaches seemed to explain much of their variation in goal attainment. We designed Fig to support what we believe are three keys to successful transformation:  

Bite-sized changes

Massive changes to our behavior almost always fail because of the friction they create with our emotional & mental wiring, and our lifestyles. We can accomplish small changes with much higher probability. These wins give us a sense of victory that motivates us to keep going. Over time our small changes add up to big results. Start with 2-3 bite-sized activities on Fig, then add more or swap them for others after you have some momentum.  

Soul nourishment

Our inner lives determine the quality of our whole lives and enable sustainable behavior change. Our perspectives, identities and attitude affect our emotions in powerful ways, and our emotions determine our choices more than most of us usually acknowledge. Fig encourages you to go beyond nutrition and exercise and include an activity or two that enhances your inner vitality e.g. take a thankfulness minute or speak morning affirmations.  

Authentic Community

Friends bolster our journeys in many ways. Camaraderie inspires us to do our best, encouragement boosts our motivation, practical advice saves us time, and the safety to be vulnerable enables friends to offer a caring word or a friendly nudge that is more nuanced than a computer could ever provide. On Fig you can support each other on one activity or many. 

We hope Fig helps you pursue holistic wellness with your community. We just released our beta app on iOS and Android.  Please let us know what is and is not working for you so we can better support your journey!


Web http://fig.com
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/teamfig
Twitter https://twitter.com/Fig

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Patient Opinion Australia is run by a great and enthusiastic team and has its own independent board. It is entirely separate from the government and health organisations and is structured as a registered not-for-profit charitable institution. All surplus goes back to improve our services.

Patient Opinion was founded in 2005 by Paul Hodgkin a GP in Sheffield, UK who wanted to make the wisdom of patients available to the NHS. The old ways of doing this - inviting a patient to sit on a working party or carrying out a survey - did not work very well so he devised Patient Opinion as a way for thousands of patients to share their experience, and help busy health service staff to improve. All at much lower cost.

We believe that patient stories are really valuable and should be made available as widely as possible. So we never charge people for access to the stories and we encourage others to re-publish stories. This means that the published version of your story (but never any of the other information you give Patient Opinion Australia) may appear on other websites such as patient organisations.

Today, everyone has a public voice on the web.  This means that everyone can blog and say exactly what they think of their health services. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube allow people to tell their story of their care, or to say how they would like their care to be different. 

But having a voice is not the same as “being heard”.  People can shout all they want on the web, but they may never know if their voice is being heard by the right people who can respond to their concerns.  Similarly, health organisations may find it difficult to make sense of these web-based comments.  People may be posting pictures of dirty toilets on a hospital ward but what exactly are busy managers supposed to do about the posting once they have sent the cleaners in?

So what is different about Patient Opinion? It allows the voice of the patient and carer to “be heard”, and thus promotes and encourages a partnership between patients/ carers and their health service providers.

Unlike  some web-based sites in Australia which ask patients to make a comment about their health experience, our Patient Opinion site provides an opportunity for health organisations to respond effectively to feedback and to demonstrate how they are using the experience of  patients and carers to improve the service for everyone. Our aim is to support health services to be the best that they can be, through constructive feedback.

Through hearing the real experiences of patients, carers and families, health service staff are able to understand what it is like to be in their patients’ shoes and the importance of getting the little details right so that they can continue doing the things that make a patient feel cared for and important. By listening and responding to their patients’ concerns, health service staff can not only improve on their services but learn from experiences and improvements undertaken across other health services around Australia.

Web http://www.patientopinion.org.au
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/PatientOpinionAustralia
Twitter https://twitter.com/ptopinion
Google+ (international page) https://plus.google.com/113147223798124976335/posts

By providing an evidence-based alternative to sleeping pills. Sleepio is an online sleep improvement programme, featuring tailored Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques, that has been shown to help overcome even long term poor sleep. And not a pill or potion in sight!

What inspired you to launch a healthcare startup?

I developed insomnia 4 years ago, and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I was lucky enough to have studied Psychology at university so I knew that evidence-based talking therapies (namely CBT) are far and away the most effective way of overcoming poor sleep. However my doctor would only give me sleeping pills!

I ended up self-administering a course of CBT from books written by sleep expert Prof Colin Espie and I was cured in 6 weeks. This inspired me to find a way to get this intervention to people using technology, and Sleepio was born. I rang Prof Espie and we have been working together on Sleepio ever since.

Where can we learn more about your healthcare startup?

Visit Sleepio.com for all your informational needs.

Are you bootstrapping or seeking investors? Why?

We bootstrapped through the whole development and clinical testing process but recently took seed funding to help us through launch. Aside from the financial security it also allowed us to get some great experienced investors involved, such as Esther Dyson. 

What is the number 1 challenge you face in building your healthcare startup?

Finding the right channel and pricing, and doing so quickly! We know the need is there and our product works, it's just a case of bringing the two together. 

What fundamental change will the web/ social media/ apps/ new technology bring to healthcare in the next 3 - 5 years?

Technology will fundamentally shift the healthcare sector from being primarily supply-driven to dictated by demand. The healthcare industry won't know what's hit it! 

Website www.Sleepio.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sleepio
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sleepio

Last month some of my colleagues and I were busy resolving questions at the office. Some patients had watched a news story on a trusted Spanish TV channel about a 'revolutionary' new approach in IVF treatments. Our patients asked about this new treatment in our appointments and also by email. Some patients even emailed the link, and requested us to watch the video for later discussions. Some patients were also confused about why we had never talked to them about this treatment: they felt mistrusted, had a lot of questions and  a bit of anger. I initially felt like a victim of an interrogation.

Usually when this kind of patient comes in to the office, they feel a bit ashamed and apologise for their attitude. They realize that maybe this wasn’t the correct way to resolve their questions and that I might be angry or upset with them. In this particular case, I explained that I already knew about this kind of treatment, but it wasn’t the most suitable for the patient. In the end the patient was surprised because instead of being angry, I thanked them for sending me this link or just letting me know about the news because I want to keep up to date with the kind of information my patients are interested in.

Some of you, my colleagues out there, may be experiencing this sort of reaction from patients every day. Those of you treating patients affected by rare diseases, cancer, chronic diseases and, of course, couples who are dealing with infertility. Do you think doctors should be angry at our patients for this behavior?

In my opinion, empowered and educated patients are something we cannot ignore. Information is out there and available on the internet, on your tablet and  on your smartphone - every single minute.

But, the issue of empowered patients becomes more complicated when a patient is seeking information about their condition and receiving knowledge from their social network, not from their doctor.  

Becauase I know that my patients are going inline for health information, I would like to have a list of trusted websites to recommend, where patients can find evidence-based articles already reviewed by doctors and the information is provided in simple, easy to understand language.

Don’t you think is our (doctors) responsibility to be there? If my patients type “endometriosis” into Google, they will find a page full of posts from patients’ forums. But there won’t be qulified medical professionals sharing evidence-based information with patients.

Being a Doctor 2.0 is just the same as being a Doctor, but on another platform. Having access to the internet, an amazingly useful, cheap and comprehensive resource, provides assistance and support for doctors in so many ways. Now is our opportunity to work together with the IT guys in order to achieve the best from the internet and the social media revolution.

The gaps between doctors and patients will become smaller. The internet brings opportunities for patients to obtain trusted medical advice in the format that suits them best: email, websites, telemedicine, online doctor and patients’ communities, educational videos, social media based support groups.

Welcome everyone to the new world of disrupted medicine. It’s the same medicine you already know, and it's always social. 

Thanks to social media, I recently got in touch with Bob Bond, Director at Pathway Software who agreed to answer my 6 for a startup:

How will you disrupt practice management software?

By providing small private healthcare practices with simple cloud-based practice management software at the best possible price.

What inspired you to launch a healthcare startup?

Three things:

1. We considered great web-based apps that we have used like Google Apps, Highrise (37 signals) and Zendesk and felt there was an opportunity to develop a product in the same vein for healthcare professionals.
2. We really wanted to simplify things. Being a healthcare professional is complicated enough without having to be a systems/IT expert as well. We wanted to develop a product could be used without any training or learning curve
3. We wanted to bring the experience that we had learnt over many years developing systems for the NHS to a new, more dynamic audience.

Where can we learn more about your healthcare startup?

www.writeupp.com

Are you bootstrapping or seeking investors? Why?

Totally bootstrapped. I’ve founded private-equity backed and publicly quoted businesses in the past and its been painful. Every investor should be judged on their own merits but very quickly I found there was a divergence between the way I wanted to run the business and the requirements/objectives of my external investors. This time it’s different - we’re paddling our own canoe!

What is the number 1 challenge you face in building your healthcare startup?

Finding great people. With the right team anything is possible - it requires patience and a good deal of flexibility. We currently operate out of three locations: Halifax, London and Copenhagen.

What fundamental change will the web/ social media/ apps/ new technology bring to healthcare in the next 3 - 5 years?

In our specialist area of therapies I believe there will be significant advances in tele-health and remote treatment. I also expect gesture-based devices like Kinect to play a bigger role in the delivery of exercise routines and assessment. Further down the track I expect remote monitoring to become commonplace.

Google+: https://plus.google.com/109966888970922638508/posts

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Building a startup is one of life's fun and challenging tasks. Building a health internet start up is even more challenging, and much more rewarding. I'll start with why it's moren fun: everyone can relate to health, whether for themselves, or for someone in their extended circle of family and friends. Any improvement that a startup can bring to the healthcare ecosystem is something that truly makes the world a better place, and this satisfying goal is a huge motivator.

But health internet startups are more challenging than other types of startups, as we've seen from the recent struggles and valuation-loss of many health-oriented companies. The market is thousands of times bigger than, say, the anti-spam market, which was the focus of my previous venture, and yet it hasn't flourished as one would have expected, in spite of the many millions of patients (and doctors) that flock to the internet for health information and conversation each day.

I'd like to share some of my observations of what it takes to build a healthy health internet startup:

Website http://treato.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/Treato_com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/treatodotcom?v=app_190322544333196

A diabetic patient in India was using a Glucometer to check his blood sugar and was manually writing the readings in a file, which was provided by the hospital in which he was consulting his doctor. The doctor would check the file and would consult him on oral medications and would advise him on the diet and exercise regimen. This process continued for 3 years until one unfortunate day, the hospital misplaced the file, which had his glucose readings and doctors prescriptions. This was a huge blow to his ongoing therapy. 

This is typically one of the challenges in diabetes management. Diabetics have to write down their glucose readings manually or have to enter them in an excel sheet which is indeed a tedious job for diabetics to do it daily. Understanding this problem, a startup in India has come up with a hardware device, which transmits the readings from a Glucometer to Android phones wirelessly. These readings can be then be analyzed with the help of an Android application, the patients can track their glucose readings, check the shifts and also email these readings to their doctor for further analysis. 

The hardware device, which is called “Diabeto”, is currently compatible with six glucometers and the team is busy researching and making the device compatible with more glucometers available in the market. 

The major plus about this device, which we loved, was the design. The team has thought over the design to a larger extent and has made it accessible to diabetic patients with vision impairment, diabetics that are partially or completely deaf, patients with motor disability. The design is already gaining popularity with children who suffer from type 1 Diabetes.

Currently, more than 350 million people all around the world suffer from diabetes. This trend of rise in population of diabetics is driving the market. Since, there is still no cure for diabetes, the only option for diabetics is to manage the disease. Sales of all segments including blood glucose meters/monitors, blood glucose test strips, lancet, lancet device, diabetes kits, and others, registered growth in 2010 compared to 2009, gaining further momentum in 2011. Other key factors driving growth include increasing number of patients preferring self-monitoring of blood glucose; technological advancements enabling the development of improved reagents, enzymes, and electrochemical biosensors used in blood glucose testing strips; and more patients seeking speedy and accurate results. 

Although, China and India have the highest number of diabetics in the world, the USA and Europe are the largest market with the two together accounting for more than 65% of market share. Having said that, the Asian market is catching up with a compounded growth of 13% every year. Diabeto plans to eye these three markets, namely US, Europe and Asia. 

There is no doubt that the device is a useful one. One more reason for its success would be the strong team behind it, it’s founded by three people team which have seen prior success with startups like yousendit.com. The team plans to release the product in the next 4-6 months time period. For more information, do check out diabeto’s website, www.diabe.to