Blog

Posted: 23 september 2020

Five years ago the word “femtech” didn’t even exist

Today femtech — female-focused technology startups designed to support women’s health — is a major investment category. Here are Europe's top femtech startups to watch in 2020: Female Fertility: Clue Ava Natural Cycles Inne Grace Health …

The People Behind the Products: Dr. Claire Novorol and Ada Health

The People Behind the Products: Dr. Claire Novorol and Ada Health This week our Editor, Nakai Jirira, had the pleasure of "sitting down" with Dr. Claire Novorol from Ada Health. We are super excited to share with you some of her insights on Ada, healthcare innovation and their Global Health Initiative. ▶️Click here to listen to what Dr. Claire Novorol had to say about Ada. Nakai: What do you think is the key problem that Ada Health has been trying to solve since the company was founded and do you think that has evolved? Dr. Novorol: We founded Ada Health in 2011 and from the very beginning, we’ve been focused on combining global medical knowledge with a unique AI approach in order to improve health outcomes. As we look to create new possibilities for the future of personal health, we’re constantly evolving and enhancing Ada’s offering and pioneering innovative solutions for tomorrow. Ada’s AI-powered health platform was originally designed as a specialist tool to support clinicians in the diagnostic process. However we realised that to have the biggest impact possible on outcomes, we needed to put this technology into the hands of users. Therefore, in 2016, we launched our consumer facing app, allowing anyone with a smartphone to access high quality, personalized health information and guidance, anytime, anywhere, for free. Ada has grown and evolved a lot over the past nine years, but we remain committed to the same core purpose: improving human health by transforming knowledge into better outcomes. Through our personalized health assessment app, we’re empowering individuals to proactively manage their health. And through our collaborations and partnerships, we’re supporting clinicians and health organizations with high quality clinical assessments and care navigation, helping to reduce unnecessary care, speeding up time to diagnosis and helping health systems, payers and providers save money and resources. We are committed to working with both individuals and healthcare organizations to tackle the global health challenges of today and tomorrow, and improving health outcomes for all. What do you think is the best thing about your product? The best thing about Ada is our commitment to medical quality. Ada was originally built by doctors, for doctors, so ensuring the highest possible medical quality has always been our number one priority. Our team of medical professionals ensures that our medical knowledge base offers the most comprehensive condition coverage, and we’re continually improving Ada’s technology to ensure that we offer best-in-class, industry-leading clinical accuracy. As a result of this commitment, preliminary results from a number of studies indicate that Ada is likely to be the most accurate and comprehensive symptom assessment available on the market. But what really makes Ada special is that our commitment to medical quality goes beyond our own offering. We want to ensure the highest medical standards across the entire sector, not just for our users. That’s why we’re constantly collaborating with organizations across the industry to drive forward industry research and encourage independent assessment and evaluation. For example, Ada is the topic driver for benchmarking AI-based symptom checkers within AI4H, a new global initiative from the World Health Organization, committed to establishing globally consistent standards for AI in healthcare. How, if at all, have you tried to connect with those that use your product? Communication and collaboration are critically important in healthcare and they are a key part of our focus at Ada. For consumers, we wanted to ensure that Ada was easy to download and use, so we spent a lot of time on designing a UI that users would love. In order to reach as many people as possible, we’ve made Ada available in English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Swahili and Romanian - languages spoken by approximately 2.86 billion people around the world. We also partner with health providers, governments and other organizations to bring Ada to their users and communities. By collaborating with local partners around the world, we’re able to connect with potential users at a deeper level, and can ensure that Ada is tailored to each and every community it serves for the greatest possible impact. We think it’s really important to listen to what our users are saying, which is why we take user feedback incredibly seriously, and are constantly looking to improve the experience for our global user base of over 10 million. We also continuously conduct user research and work closely with the medical community and industry partners to iteratively improve Ada’s user experience, for example by optimising flow, improving intuitiveness and adding natural language processing. This has helped us build, and continuously refine, an award-winning user experience for Ada users around the world. Ada is empowering users to become active members of their care team; how we connect, and communicate, with our community in this process is fundamental to its success. What do you think the future looks like for Ada Health and Health Tech innovation in general and how does it make you feel? The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the healthcare and healthtech industries. We’ve seen increased collaboration as companies around the world have come together to combat the pandemic, and the rate of adoption of new technologies has drastically accelerated with innovative technologies providing vital support for individuals and health systems across all aspects of care. It’s an important shift. People have recognised the value that digital health solutions can bring for some time, but the pandemic has encouraged them to enact real change at scale. Looking ahead, I expect to see this continue, with digital health solutions firmly cementing themselves in our everyday lives. That said, we need to ensure the industry is able to mature alongside this accelerated growth, making sure we are thorough about addressing core issues, such as regulation, data privacy, quality assurance, interoperability, integration and more. If we get it right, the benefits of this change will be considerable, from easing the immense pressure being put on health systems to better informing and empowering users. As someone with first-hand experience of the pressures of being a frontline health worker, this is a really exciting prospect. I’m optimistic that the future for healthcare and healthtech will be more collaborative and impact focused, with tech companies, care providers, policymakers and insurers working together to improve patient outcomes and support health systems in the delivery of value-based, patient-centric care. What do you think is the biggest challenge in healthcare at a global level? Globally, four billion people around the world lack access to basic health services and, due to population growth, the global shortfall in health workers is expected to be over 12.9 million by 2035. Digital solutions like Ada can play a huge role in tackling this professional resource gap and widespread clinical shortages. By directing individuals to the right care in the first instance, we can support health professionals and improve both efficiency and access, at scale. That’s why, in 2019, we launched The Ada Global Health Initiative, a series of major projects dedicated to using AI to improve the availability and delivery of healthcare in underserved populations worldwide. To achieve our goal, we partner with like-minded organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Fondation Botnar and the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences. Last year, we launched Ada in Swahili and Romanian, making it the world’s first AI health guidance app to be localised for both languages and regions. The Swahili version of the app is opening up access to healthcare and guidance for over 100 million Swahili speakers across East and Sub-Saharan Africa - an area that is disproportionately affected by the global shortage in health workers, with only one physician per 1,000 people on average. Language barriers are also a key part of the issue when it comes to healthcare access, which is why we’re also currently working on launching Ada in Simplified English. There’s still a great deal to be done to address today’s global health crisis, and we’re committed to collaborating with organizations around the world to tackle this challenge together and ensure anyone, anywhere, has access to the healthcare they need. What has been the most exciting thing for your and the team at Ada? It’s always exciting to be at the forefront of something truly transformative, and feel the impact that Ada has on a daily basis. Every new user, partnership or research paper takes us one step closer to our goal, and the team is continually working on some amazingly innovative projects. That said, this year Ada was named a 2020 Tech Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, which was an incredible moment for the team. It’s great to see health tech innovations like Ada receive this recognition, and we’re excited to continue our work with organizations around the world to unlock new possibilities for personal health and improve outcomes. To learn more about Ada please email partnerships@ada.com or visit: www.ada.com. Company: Ada Health Founders: Dr. Claire Novorol, Daniel Nathrath, Dr. Martin Hirsch We would like to say a massive thank you to Dr. Novorol and all of the team at Ada for sitting down with us at GIANT. The interview was facilitated by Nakai Jirira our GIANT Health Editor who is passionate about product; get in touch!

Join Health Foundry | a collaborative, community to help start-ups who are working to improve health and wellbeing

Join Health Foundry for as little as £20+VAT per month and get a 30% discount on all exhibition packages at the global GIANT Health event. Contact hello@healthfoundry.org for more information!

KidsX brings together top children’s hospitals and health startups to create digital solutions that will transform pediatric care for children and their families

KidsX brings together top children’s hospitals and health startups to create digital solutions that will transform pediatric care for children and their families KidsX, an international consortium of pediatric hospitals focused on improving digital health innovation through collaboration, has launched its Accelerator. Committed to solving the most pressing problems in pediatric care delivery, KidsX facilitates relationships between leading children’s hospitals and entrepreneurial innovators to build, test and deploy software solutions to make pediatric care exceptionally effective, safe, efficient and convenient for children and families. “Despite the fact that pediatric patients make up 20 percent of the national patient population, pediatric digital health innovation has been placed on the backburner due to lack of funding and support,” says Omkar Kulkarni, MPH, Chief Innovation Officer at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Managing Director of KidsX. “KidsX is poised to be the international leader in pediatric digital health innovation by enabling collaboration between leading children’s hospitals to source, screen, prioritize, test and deploy purpose-built digital health solutions at scale.” The largest pediatric-focused digital health accelerator in the world, the KidsX Accelerator is a 13-week virtual accelerator program designed to partner 10 talented, promising early stage digital health companies with clinician and administrative leaders at leading pediatric hospitals to determine if product/market fit exists within pediatric healthcare delivery. There are more than 30 KidsX pediatric hospitals committed to providing mentorship as entrepreneurs build digital products to meet the unique needs of pediatric patients and their families, piloting the products to validate clinical efficacy and enabling the scaling of validated solutions to hospitals across the country. Digital health companies are encouraged to sign up to take part in the KidsX Accelerator at https://kidsx.health/.

Innovators unite for the kiddos!

Mike Biselli recently joined forces with KidsX (https://www.kidsx.health/?ck_subscriber_id=692458145) as a coach and enabler for this incredibly important initiative! Below, there is a short podcast episode to learn more about KidsX, why Mike is so excited about it, and the opportunity for a GIANT's community to get involved.

Barcelona Health Hub Summit, October 29, 2020.

Barcelona Health Hub (BHH) is a non-profit organization that was founded in 2018. It aims to accelerate the transformation in digital health, encouraging interaction between start-ups, corporates, institutions, health corporations, universities and investors. The organization's goal is to be an…

Ask the Investor with Jai Juneja, Head of Tech Investment from SeekVentures and Kartik Varma, Managing Director of the Barclays Accelerator powered by Techstars

Access to investors is rare, so when you have a chance to pick the brains of some of the best in the business, you shouldn’t pass it up. Jonno Southam, who leads Venture Capital Business Development for Amazon Web Services (AWS), sat down with Kartik Varma, Managing Director of the Barclays Accelerator powered by Techstars, and Jai Juneja, Head of Tech Investments at SeekVentures, to talk about the state of the sector at the 2018 event. The investors said they saw a couple of key themes emerging among startups. First, unbundling the bank – separating functions like mortgages, current accounts, and so on – and, second, large enterprise investments, for example the technology for getting information to investors, such as startups disrupting products like the Bloomberg Terminal. Juneja said many of these startups are focused on disrupting the user experience, but plenty of companies are also applying novel technologies to fintech problems. Distributed ledger technology, such as the blockchain, is being explored in several areas, as are artificial intelligence and machine learning. Both investors said they look closely at a startup’s tech stack. “Architecture is destiny,” said Varma, explaining that early decisions can affect how the company develops and what it is able to do later. This is where cloud technology can preserve flexibility. Often, said Juneja, “our portfolio companies do due diligence” on a potential investment’s tech stack. That’s important because, as anyone who has spent any time in startups knows, new businesses frequently have to ‘pivot’ – to change their approach, as circumstances evolve. Varma said it’s always important to consider how big a pain point a company is solving – is the startup’s solution addressing a big market where the problem is deeply felt. A startup has little chance of success if it isn’t solving a customer’s problem. He said companies often consider ‘product-market fit’ – how well their product addresses the market in question, but they don’t often consider ‘founder-market fit’. In other words, why is this particular founder the right person to change this specific market? Juneja said that for early stage companies he is looking at “problem, team and market” but there’s room for change. With later-stage companies, business models are more of a concern. Asked about how his views on certain trends had changed, he said he is more skeptical of peer-to-peer lending companies than he was a few years ago. Conversely, he has been surprised by the potential of challenger banks and is now more optimistic about their potential. It isn’t just startups that change their ideas as new information comes to light. Investors do, too. Learn more about how AWS can support your fintech startup and register to be the first to hear when registrations for the 2019 AWS FS:Insight open .

New GIANT Thinking podcast episode now available

In this episode GIANT Health (Global Innovation And New Technology) CEO Barry Shrier welcomes Dr Ali Parsa. Ali shares his heritage from coming to the UK as a refugee to scaling the heights of the health tech industry - an…

Health Tech Hive brings together change-makers to work together to build technology solutions to some of the world’s biggest current and future health challenges

Health Tech Hive are a network of founders, clinicians, policy makers, researchers, engineers, designers and investors striving towards the same goal of significantly improving healthcare for all. We started as a popular monthly supper club for women working in health…

Deloitte launches Garage online challenge

Deloitte has launched the Garage Online Challenge, a 2-month online challenge inviting developers, data scientists and analysts, marketing gurus, designers, startups and idea generators to team up and propose next generation ideas across two of Deloitte’s business departments. From now until February 16, EU-based tech enthusiasts can go online to brainstorm, develop and submit new smart solutions for one of the following challenges: the future of mobility or the future of energy. Each challenge has a prize pool worth EUR7,500, which will be distributed among 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. The winning team from each industry challenge will receive an all-expenses paid trip to present their prototype at the grand opening of Deloitte’s new innovative centre, The Garage, on April 11 – 12, 2019, in Amsterdam. Deloitte will open its Garage doors in April, housed in the iconic Citroën garage next to the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. The Garage will be Deloitte’s space and place where it “will co-create the future business of our clients. Here we will re-imagine and establish new businesses, ventures, propositions, and experiences. Together with our clients. At our workshop”. The Garage Online Challenge, aims to revolutionize the energy and mobility industries and the services offered to their end customers. So if you work within those sectors register for the Challenge here today.

Five questions every private equity investor will ask technology businesses

Raising money from private equity investors to fund growth is a well-trodden path for technology businesses, and the key to a securing the deal is preparation, says Jack Clipsham and Haodong Zhang of Kreston Reeves. Here, they share the five key questions every private equity investor will ask a technology business looking for funding. Before approaching any funder, a technology business needs to ask itself one important question: how much is it looking to raise? The answer will determine who might be interested in investing. Companies looking for smaller amounts, typically under £2m, would be best looking towards family offices, high net worth individuals and private funds. Those businesses wanting more substantial amounts are best approaching larger private equity investors with institutional backing. There are a significant number of sources of funding and it is important to pitch to the right providers in terms of both amount and sector specialism. Irrespective of the amount raised, senior management teams can expect to be asked the following five questions: Q1. What are you going to do with the funds? There are three good reasons why would-be funders ask this question. Firstly, to simply make sure the right kind of funding is being sought. Would, for example, debt funding or asset-based lending be more appropriate and less dilutive for shareholders?

London-based uMotif raises £5m Series A

London-based uMotif – the patient-centric data capture software company has raised £5 million in a Series A investment round led by existing investor AlbionVC. The funding, which also saw participation from Oslo-based DNV-GL and existing angel investors, will accelerate uMotif’s growth and will fuel further development of its patient-centric and decentralised approach to clinical studies and enable expansion into new study types and more high-demand territories. Life sciences companies are increasingly embracing decentralised and virtual study designs – where patient consent and data is captured using their own devices from wherever they are located. This is in stark contrast to the centralised, inconvenient and complex studies in which patients have to go to a site, such as a hospital, to submit their data. uMotif powers innovative decentralised and patient-centric approaches that increase how engaged patients are, thus improving the chances of the study’s success, reduce burden on participants, and help reach new patient populations to increase study diversity. With studies taking place in 26 countries from clinical to real-world settings, and across more than 25 therapeutic areas – from dermatology and rare disease to oncology and cardiology, uMotif’s focus is to foster a highly engaging patient experience to capture larger volumes of higher quality data. “We’re excited to help our customers implement patient-centred research designs by using the uMotif platform to capture high-quality data,” says Bruce Hellman, CEO and Co-Founder of uMotif. “This new funding will rapidly accelerate our development and will ultimately help our customers to get new therapies to patients faster”. Dr. Andrew Elder, Deputy Managing Partner at AlbionVC adds, “uMotif’s platform is built with patients in mind; designed to help academics, researchers and healthcare professionals to capture the best quality data in a way that suits the participants. “It’s a win-win for all stakeholders and the platform has the potential and momentum to revolutionise the speed and efficiency with which therapies can reach and help millions of patients.” Kaare Helle, Venture Director at DNV GL says: “Healthcare is dependent on digital transformation if it is to move towards being a more sustainable sector. “We have been impressed with the platform and the management team at uMotif who are responsive to customer and patient needs and passionate about making a difference.” The funding will further enhance uMotif’s highly configurable software platform to support existing studies and support new study designs, and will drive continued commercial growth and enable further geographical expansion.

Get Involved

On the day