Eugene "B"-log

Global SVP Healthcare, @SoftServeInc , Co-Founder @questiongram, Health 2.0 NYC & Amsterdam Chapter Founder, Entrepreneur, Husband, Father to 2 great girls!

[eugeneb]

The @Zenefits Fiasco - an alternative view

It’s been a while since I have written a personal blog, but felt that I needed to express myself when I saw the Washington Post piece on Zenefits: 

What the turmoil at Zenefits reveals about Silicon Valley’s big problem with health care

First and foremost, if you haven't followed the news, Zenefits got hit over the head for not obtaining licenses in individual states to resell insurance. Bad bad bad! I am in no way condoning meeting quotas on growth and bypassing regulations, but I also wanted to put a different perspective on this topic. 

My main question: is it Silicon Valley’s problem with health care or the health care incumbents and regulators problem with Silicon Valley (and beyond)?

Many many entrepreneurs are trying to change health care around the world and given the speed of change in this highly regulated industry the choices are to work within the system (marginal) or outside of the system (disruptive).

Let’s take this apart logically:

Impact to patients?

The health insurance industry in US is complex, complicated and very difficult to navigate for individuals consumers, but in this case for small and medium size businesses partially driven by regulations and small regional / state “oligopolies” (not to mention the recent M&A activities with the big insurers). Zenefits brought to the table an easy(ish) way to navigate, choose and manage employee benefits, but they consciously (or not) decided to work outside of the system. I am curious to understand what was the impact to the ultimate consumer of the brokered services: us the healthcare consumers? My bet is NONE (but do let me know if my hypothesis is flawed). The impact was to the regulators who could not collect the licensing fees, the impact was to other competing brokerages/brokers who most likely lost the transactional fees and invested in the licensing and finally to the insurers themselves since it brought maybe more transparency to the process as well potentially less revenue. 

Free is good enough for me

Whether you are a believer in the FREEmium model or not is irrelevant. In many products, it just simply works. People want to see, feel, get personal & personalized value out of the “service” and only then pay! In order for a company to do this great, service and value are key to drive the conversion rate. 

“The company had previously run into resistance when the state of Utah in 2014 sent a violation letter to the company, alleging that the free software it provided — a key part of its disruptive strategy — amounted to an illegal kickback. “

I will not debate the legalities of this but to me maybe, just maybe the regulations are not keeping up with new business model?

Keep on changing the healthcare consumer experience! 

I want to be very clear here, laws exist for a reason:  - whether they move and adjust quick enough is a whole different discussion. I command Zenefits on quick response and being committed to fixing the issue, but I also want to urge the innovators in this complex healthcare ecosystem to do what is right for the healthcare consumers, patients and their caregivers. Drive with passion, enthusiasm and the ultimate goal of happier and healthier lives for 7B people on this planet!  

[eugeneb]

Quantifying your Health on a SmartWatch..

While I travel a lot, I very very rarely drive anywhere, mostly using trains and planes. This weekend, I escaped to the beach for about two hours during a celebratory Dutch summer (for those of you who live(d) here know exactly what I am talking about). It was about a 50 min drive, with my iPhone’s primary purpose serving as a GPS.

The same iPhone was connected to my car and playing music which I wanted to change - music is for the soul and the soul feels motivated by different things at different times :)

So I had a few choices:

1. Use my onboard car system to navigate to a different song - too complex and distracting from driving. 

2. Pick up my iPhone and do the same with many clicks - same problem. 

3. Pick up my iPhone and ask Siri, but that would ruin my navigation experience.. 

or.. 

 4. Ask my iWatch, so I did. “Siri play some jazz music"

Next thing I know it started playing Jan Krittel Novak and the Bridge Band - I honestly didn’t even know I had their music but to my pleasant surprise it matched my "driving in the sun" expectations (for a few minutes).

Since then I have been trying to speak to my watch and testing different things:

“Siri Record my food”, which launched maps and showed me nearby food places

“Siri Record that I just ate a burger”, this one did the same thing but now showed me all the burger joints nearby

“Siri add to loseIT the fact that I ate a burger” - “Sorry, Eugene I can’t do that”

“Siri add a burger to dinner to LoseIT” - ahh there is yet another great Burger Bar near my house..

While all this was unsuccessful, it got me thinking that we have so many ways to quantify the calorie burn with all the wearables (including this iWatch) but still no easy way to record all these ‘festive' events whether its breakfast, lunch or dinner or all the snacks in between.

To date we have many mobile apps to record what we ate and what quantities but unfortunately technology hasn’t caught up yet to actually watch what goes into your mouth or alternatively no insertables that I know of that can watch the food digest and give you a break down of the fats, proteins, carbs and total calories consumed. Yes there is MyFitnessPal, LoseIT, Noom and many more but all require real dedication, real commitment and discipline.

So is there a near term opportunity to leverage our voice to do just that through our new and shiny SmartWatches:

“Siri I just ate a burger with fries, how many calories do I have left for the day"

Through HealthKit, Siri gets the data irrespective of the underlying app I use and then:

“Eugene, you are really hitting these burgers lately, you have eaten one every other day and you should have two glasses of water and a small bag of carrots for snack"

How far away are we from this? Not too far

PS. If you know any tips, hacks or ways we can ease the quantification of food intake let me know!

[eugeneb]

Why 2015 is the pivotal year for #digitalhealth

The mainstream healthcare consumer in 2014 embraced the ALS Ice Bucket challenge and panicked (rightfully so) about the staggering wake-up call of the Ebola outbreak. While the politicians in US played the Obamacare ping pong game, and Brussels accepted it’s first applications for eHealth projects as part of Horizon 2020, there was also a major undercurrent in how digital health and health IT has penetrated our everyday lives.

In US alone, the digital health funding more then doubled from 2013 according to RockHealth and even almost tripled according to StartupHealth. While the delta is not a rounding error, the key point is the exponential trajectory that showcases smart money believes this industry is ripe for significant disruption.

There are still many companies and investors that are sitting on the sidelines and watching the show from the balcony. As an example, there are many critics of wearable devices and even some hesitations on value of big data, but I want to remind everyone that Rome was not built in a day and the first generation or even second generation of devices, big data platforms, decision support tools will improve mainly driven by healthcare entrepreneurs, healthcare consumers and passionate scientists and clinicians – the “stormchasers”.

On February 2nd, I attended a local Singularity University lecture with a keynote from Gerd Leonhard, who is a thinker, futurist and a digital heretic. One of the statements he made really resonated with me: “Technology is exponential, humans are not”. The keynote was all about ethics in the age of exponential technology but leaving privacy and ethical issues aside, 2015 will be a pivotal year for digital health in an era of exponential technology:

1. Precision medicine During the State of the Union Address, President Obama announced the precision medicine initiative.  

"I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine — one that delivers the right treatment at the right time. In some patients with cystic fibrosis, this approach has reversed a disease once thought unstoppable. Tonight, I'm launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes — and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier."

Precision or personalized medicine (I use the term interchangeably) is an approach to use medical and genetics data, body generated data, biotechnology and science to first and foremost understand the root causes of the disease but also come up with personalized and individualized treatments and therapies.

Due to forthcoming government funding but more importantly smart money and brilliant entrepreneurs, we will certainly see more activity this year. After all “Health IS Personal"

2. Genomics

As DNADigest describes it:

"The techniques for researching and characterizing genomics diseases are available to both researchers (next generation DNA sequencing) and the general public (in the form of personal testing), so we should soon be able to diagnose any genetic disease by sequencing a patient’s DNA."

Indeed, this is the future but the future is almost here: Illumina with $1,000 per full genome sequencing, Tute Genomics which is now allowing researchers and clinicians to interpret the entire human genome as well as a big announcement for 23andMe on their entrance to the UK market. As an industry, there are still a lot of hurdles but we will see some significant moves this year in this space including ways to actually analyze 150 zetabytes (1021) of data per full genome, begin integrating this data into evolving & ancient EMR platforms and providing genetic counseling to offset the lack of knowledge by the masses.

3. Smart Data & Data Science Well actually, data itself is not smart, people are! And while there is a huge promise in bigdata analysis, collecting and hoarding zetabytes (yes this term again) of data does not bring any value. People need to ask the right questions of the data. We are at an age where collecting data is easy with body generated data, environmental data, traditional medical data, but it is the data scientists combined with sharp business and clinical skills that will empower the healthcare system to make all this data actionable with the healthcare consumer at the center.

"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything" - Ronald Coase

4. Next Generation EMR is personal

Let’s face it, and this is not news to anybody - core medical data is already becoming a small percentage of overall personal health record. Existing EMR platforms are over two decades old. and are struggling to keep up pace with archaic architectures, millions of lines of code and minimal to no differentiation to their client base today. The smart ones are looking to open up their API’s, integrate body generated & genomics data combined even with environmental data at a personalized level to be able to provide that precision medicine at point of care.

5. Design & Aesthetics Our bodies are complex and therefore the medical profession is complex. Once again, unprecedented amounts of content is generated daily and for both consumers and clinicians alike dealing with this information overload is becoming yet another full time job. Aforementioned smart data discussion is only a piece of the puzzle, user experience is another. At the core of our health is human behavior and hence incentivizing healthcare consumers (patients), making their treatment pathway clear, presenting stupid data in a smart and actionable way is key to improving our healthcare system.

Global health care transformation is still in its infancy and while we don’t truly know what the future holds, we all know that health is personal.

[eugeneb]

Amsterdam: The most liberal city in the world! ??

I started coming to Amsterdam over 4.5 years ago now, first traveling back and forth and then about 3.5 years ago moved with the whole family to this beautiful city. I love Amsterdam for the deep rooted history, I love Amsterdam for the beautiful canals and architecture, I love Amsterdam for the great nooks and streets, I love Amsterdam for the deep culture it sustained and all the cultural events and museums, I love Amsterdam for it’s relaxed atmosphere and at the same time the hustle and bustle of the City Centrum, I love Amsterdam for Red Light District and the Coffee Shops: not for the consumption of these services but for what it represents - FREEDOM!

I am currently reading a great book: “Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City” by Russell Shorto and at location 217 he states: 

"Amsterdam is, by most accounts, the most liberal place on earth” 

Furthermore if we look back at the history of Amsterdam another profound statement is made reflecting on how the Dutch pushed the envelope with existing structures: “..need for a society in which strong individuals cooperate with one another to get things done on their own, as opposed to the medieval model that prevailed elsewhere in Europe, in which a nobleman ruled an estate and serfs” There are many more quotes to list but I want to keep this short and get to the point. I got a ticket to the Cannabis Cup expo just for a one-day pass on Sunday to understand the business models, to talk to interesting people and to learn - no I am not a marijuana activist though I do think it should be legalized!  On November 17th, I got an email from the organizers with the following message and the rules clearly identified:

"A Message from HIGH TIMES:  Welcome Cannabis Cup Attendees! We can finally announce the venue for the 27th Cannabis Cup. The location is Radion Amsterdam, Louwesweg 1, 1066 EA Amsterdam. Our apologies for the delayed information.  The City of Amsterdam has tightened their regulations on certain events particularly those involving cannabis and cannabis products.  We have been working closely with the Mayor’s office to make this event happen in line with these new guidelines. Here are the new Rules that we must follow: 1)     Expo attendees and those working the booths will only be allowed up to 5 grams of personal cannabis or hash. 2)     Security will be on hand to search bags and back bags and will confiscate amounts over the 5 grams. 3)     Solvent-based cannabis extracts are not legal under Dutch law.  You will not be allowed to bring shatter, wax or torches into the Expo. 4)     Vendors are not allowed to distribute or share cannabis or cannabis-related products with the attendees.  The Mayor’s office is strictly enforcing this NO cannabis distribution law - to smoke at the Expo you will need to bring your own.  None of these rules shocked me or upset me and I thought it was a responsible thing to do by the city and the organizers but then there came an update about the venue change to the Melkweg " When I showed up at the MelkWeg, Dan Skye form High Times had a really tough message to deliver: at this 27th annual gathering, the city threatened to raid Melkweg and arrest everyone there.

Here is the statement directly from their website: "As you may already know, the Amsterdam Cannabis Cup Expo was forced to alter its original plan at the Melkweg today.    We want everyone to know that we would never have allowed vendors to set up, nor would we have had opened the doors to the Expo without assurances from the Mayor’s office that we were under compliance.    From the onset, we were informed by our lawyers, who were were working with the Mayor’s office, that as long as we remained compliant with local regulations, we would be allowed to proceed. We have strenuously tried to meet those standards and go beyond them.   This morning we were informed that if were to proceed with the Cannabis Cup Expo the event would be shut down and all participants would be arrested. In the 26 years of the Cannabis Cup, there has never been any health or safety issues, nor has there been any lawlessness on the part of attendees.    We apologize for the inconvenience and confusion that this extra-legal intervention has caused. " I stopped over yesterday & today in between my meetings, to ask the High Times crew about the updates and there were still no clear demands from the Mayor’s office. They have complied with all the demands,to their knowledge, they have inadvertently disappointed many small businesses & vendors who spent a lot of money to come to Amsterdam to showcase their products, they have inadvertently disappointed the out of town visitors who are passionate about cannabis but most importantly their delivered message to the public was that Amsterdam is not what it used to be. (not in those direct words) I decided to stop over at the police station across the street and as a resident of The Netherlands, not an activist, politely inquired about the real demands - the answer I was given is that they have no idea about what is going on across the street and not involved. Furthermore directed me to call the Mayor’s office, but would not give me the number and told me to look it up on the internet.

I spoke to another policeman outside who kindly did provided me with the main phone number (14-020) and apologetically stated that the police department had nothing to do with the decision. I called the City of Amsterdam and they had no further information, no public statement and told me to fill out a form online to inquire. People asked me why I am so passionate about this and I have to honestly say it has nothing to do with Cannabis but more to do with lack of transparency, lack of public response, lack of cooperation, lack of civil liberties that seem to be reaching this great country which always has been on the forefront of change and the bleeding edge of innovation! I will end with this quote from the same book: "We are not “bounded by oceans and mountains,”  That is, since the Netherlands was an open landscape, rulers had to expect a free flow of information and ideas and to put up with it, even if some of those ideas were repellent.” Let’s have a clear and transparent conversation Mr. Mayor & Mr. Minister of Justice!

[eugeneb]

Patient Safety Event Recap - better late than never!

I have been really slacking and not in just personal blogs but also in our recaps of the Health 2.0 Amsterdam events. I even missed one completely. I want to personally apologize to each and every one of you. I know that building a community is about communication so I appreciate your patience. I am also super excited that Hans Dijkstra joined us a few months back and have been now a key driver and contributor to this community! If you haven't done so already, please welcome Hans as a co-organizer!

Before I move into the summary, we have a request:  – we have been asked numerous times by the members of this community to stream the events and while I feel that the real, in-person interactions, discussions, and feedback is what makes these meetups great, we also realize that everyone is very busy and would love to provide this as an option (mostly for later viewing).  If you would like to volunteer (or know anyone who would) to be our streaming and recording guru it would be greatly appreciated. I realize that with the technology today this is a very easy task, but would love to have someone fully responsible for this portion of our meetup. What do you get: a satisfaction that over 500 members can be part of our community and contribute but also learn from the great presenters we have every month as well as from each other in the Q&A sessions.

Now for the recap

Nictiz

As always, we try to combine the presenters into themes, however this one we had to stretch the definition.  We gathered again at ACE Venture Lab (thank you Jeoren for graciously hosting us again) to talk about risk management and interoperability. Between the dynamic and passionate Serge Diekstra from iPatientSafety and Lies Van Gennip, CEO of Nictiz, who eloquently laid out the challenges ahead for interoperability, we had a blast and felt that the two presentations melded together very well (please give us your feedback as always)

I learn something from every meetup we host and while living here for 3 years with great familiarity of the healthcare system, some of the statistics presented by Lies, opened my eyes. While I will not go through the detailed recap (you can find the presentation here) I want to point out just a few things that struck me:

  With the specialization of hospitals, interoperability becomes even more urgent with data on quality as well as transparency as key outputs – while this is nothing earth shattering , I wanted to call this out explicitly

While highly fragmented, the electronic data exchange  percentages actually impressed me (especially GP) though I would question what “electronic “means? :)

The re-use of data is absolutely shameful and appalling.  We really need to do more to open up the data to community and researchers.

Meaningful Use in Netherlands – this was a great discussion point and Lies pointed out that in Netherlands today there is no carrot nor the stick – does the government here have to step in to force MU-like policies modified for this market?

  This MU discussion inspired the group to put on a debate which we will be hosting at Rockstart on November 26th. From a technology perspective there is absolutely no reason why this can not be done but we have vested interests in this industry, regulatory hurdles, closed systems and lack of incentives to make this work. But I will pause here and please look for the detailed agenda, but make sure you RSVP early!

iPatientSafety

Not sure where to start here but Serge delivered a thought provoking and energetic presentation. Please flip through it on Slideshare but the executive summary  of what is similar across the two industries is well captured by “insidiousness of human error”. In US alone between 210K to 440K fatalities happen every year that could have been prevented.

Serge also used a quote from Joel Achenbach “You could think of it as dominoes falling, except it’s more brutal than that: The dominoes are all simultaneously crushed from above.” Joel was referring to the BP disaster in his book, but think about a patient being rushed into the emergency room with heart failure – really food for thought.

I am also honored that the iPatientSafety team is entrusting me to deliver their presentation at the upcoming Health 2.0 London on the second day of the event (November 11th, 10:45AM). Speaking of which - hope to see you there and you can use our special code for 25% off (AMS14)

Now for the upcoming events

National Health Big Data Challenge - (Nov 7 is application due date)

HIMSS Amsterdam - (Nov 6-7) , Amsterdam

Health 2.0 Europe - (Nov 10-12), London (use code AMS14 if you still want to register)

World Healthcare Forum - (Nov 30 - Dec 2), Den Haag

[eugeneb]

Patient Safety: Whats the difference between an oil rig and a hospital?

Our next Health 2.0 Amsterdam Event will take place on September 29th at ACE Venture Lab.

We thought the title of this event was "sexy" so decided to leave it as is, but this event is about much more than the this. I will not steal the thunder from Gert-Jan Kamps from iPatientSafety, but if you think about an oil rig there is no room for error. There are processes and procedures in place, continuity plans, worst case scenario planning and much more in order to preserve our planet. But what about healthcare?

We, as healthcare consumers, are individuals and each one of us is unique so do we need to industrialize healthcare first or can we jump straight to personalization?.

Given the rapid innovation cycle in technology, are we prone to making significant and potentially deadly mistakes when it comes to our health? Do we need more standards and regulations or will the industry adjust by itself? 

Many questions to ponder about prior to the event, so please come prepared with your thoughts, observations and critical mind so we can have a great set of discussions on this very important topic.

Agenda

18:30 – 19:00  Networking

19:00 – 19:30  Gert-Jan Kamps, iPatientSafety Project

20:00- 20:30  Lies Van Gennip, CEO of Nictiz

20:30-21:00  Group Discussion: Meaningful Use in the Netherlands?

21:00 -21:30 Networking

More details on the presentations:

First up is Gert-Jan Kamps who will speak about the strange situation that we are designing robotic surgeons on the one hand, but on the other hand we still cannot root out persistent ‘never events’ like wrong site surgery or medication errors. In this presentation a brief overview of basic risk management principles will be given from a cognitive psychological point of view. BP’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and relevant parallels with healthcare will be discussed.

Next we are very happy to announce that Lies Van Gennip, CEO of NICTIZ will spend time speaking about NICTIZ and it’s mission. Nictiz is the National IT institute for healthcare. Nictiz is paid by the government, to facilitate the development of interoperability in health care (through information standards) and to monitor health IT trends. The use of national IT standards is not (yet) mandatory in the Netherlands. Nevertheless there are some area’s where standards, developed together with many stakeholders in the Dutch health care field, are successfully implemented. She will present two of those successful area’s: the emergency care setting and medication safety.

We will then break into a group discussion around Meaningful Use – for those who are following the US Healthcare market you are probably familiar with the term, for those of you who are not come and learn. The idea here is to have a great discussion around it’s viability the Dutch healthcare system.

[eugeneb]

Forward looking flashback: 3 #Healthcare news bytes of 2014

Note: Below was written on December 22nd,  2013, but  “publish” button was never pressed.. The My Basis acquisition announcement triggered my memory. The idea was to publish this after all the new year’s resolutions, recaps of 2013 and predictions for 2014 were over…

“We are well past last year’s recaps and 2014 bold predictions season: what technologies to watch, hottest trends, investment forecasts, people who will make a difference and much more. So my flashback of Healthcare in 2014 is an attempt to jump into the digital health time machine and pick out top 3 trends and events that will shape the future of 2015 health innovation on December 31st, 2014 – please note the complete fictional characteristics of this post.) 

Sitting near a fireplace, it is nice to reflect on 2014 and all the innovation that pushed digital healthcare forward this year to make an impact to us, the healthcare consumers, so without further adieu my top 3 :

Consumer genetic tests get a boost with FDA clearance

I am sure you all remember the big news last December, when the FDA arbitrarily issued a warning letter targeted at 23andme to stop marketing it’s genetics kit that has been on the market since 2007. Since early in the year, only ancestry information was possible with the kit, 23andme made a smart move in lowering the price to $49.95 with a promise to “turn-on” full genetic analysis once the FDA cleared the pathway. This was a smart move to bring a great amount of consumers to the platform. The promised collaboration with the FDA was successful and 23andme resumed the analysis of new kits as well as a backlog of hundreds of thousands of ancestry kits giving the company a greater pool of consumers to analyze for the humanity’s social good. In other news, an innovative Saas EHR, Dr.Chrono integrated 23andme data (with consumer consent of course) to help physicians make sense of the genetic data in a clear and concise format.

Medical Body area networks and quantified self moved even closer to mass adoption

We made a lot of progress in this space and the 2014 QS conference was a huge success with the most attended delegates ever! To paraphrase my good friend and a fellow Health 2.0 (London) Chapter organizer, Maneesh Juneja says – “our bodies produce a lot of data, we just can’t capture it all yet but the potential is there”. Well this year we have seen at least a dozen new fitness trackers including the one from Sony at CES, that joined the early leaders in the space: FitBit, Basis Science and Jawbone UP. Intel which is a big investor in Basis , purchased them outright in May to continue their foray into wearables science. They also led an investment round into TicTrac to consolidate the data for their investments and beyond. Cleveland Clinic registered the 2360-2390 MHz FCC approved hospital band and partnered with Cisco Systems to pilot their Connected Patient platform.

Investors continue rushing into Digital Health

Over $2B was pumped into digital health space by  investors in 2013 but this year the industry saw even a larger increase, reaching $3.13B. Corporate venture arms poured money into the market as a way to acquire technology and talent to fast forward their internal innovation processes (yep internal innovation – is there such a thing?).  The long tail of the investment community, who was sitting on the sidelines, also has jumped significantly bringing new logos to the investor’s board.  Big Data Clinical Analytics and Wearbles for the first time individually surpassed EHR Software investments showcasing the need for body-producing data captures and actionable analysis focused on preventative care.

That's all folks.

[eugeneb]

Financing Healthcare Innovation: Is it working?

We are the storm chasers, innovators and transformers, who live on the edge, pushing the boundaries of an archaic healthcare system. At the end of the day all our efforts require funding to bring them to life. At our next Health 2.0 Amsterdam extended event, we will bring together many stakeholders with a number of presenters and panels to learn and contribute to this very important topic and to explore the question of: " Is it actually working?"

What are the first words that come to mind when you hear the word “healthcare”? For many, and forgive my use of hashtags it is: #archaic , #broken, #inefficient, #costly, #manual and the list goes on. While the google trends quick search on the words “healthcare innovation” may not be a true indicator of the market, the upward trend certainly correlates with the amount of activity we have been witnessing.

Crowdfunding, angels, venture capital, corporate ventures, public funds, public private partnerships, numerous accelerators and incubators and the list continues. So throughout the event we will also engage our presenters into answering a question that is on many people's minds:  So what do you do if you are a healthcare innovator with a bright idea? What are your funding choices and pros and cons for each?

Agenda

17:30  Networking: Connect, Create and Cure together

18:00  Event Introduction 

18:20  PHS Capital Portfolio Startup presentations

18:50  Panel 1: The journey of a fundable and funded startup (Panelists TBA)

It is always great to hear the success stories from startups but the road has many bumps along the way and only a few make it. We will hear from the founders of PHS portfolio  companies: what was their journey to get the funds, their lessons learned and go forward scaling of the business goals. We will also get feedback form the venture capital community on what made them invest into their portfolio companies. 

19:15  Panel 2: Public – Private Partnership Models: Myth, reality or is it too early to tell? (Panelists TBA)

Public-private partnership is another trendy phrase we keep hearing, but

is it working? Are there any success stories? Is there a good marriage in these partnerships? Some think it’s a myth, some believe it is the only way to go forward but many are on the fence. This also highly depends on the country, region and even local municipality. In this intense panel, we will focus on Netherlands to help the local entrepreneurs make the right choice. Since this panel might get a bit heated we have allocated a little extra time :)

19:45  Panel 3: So where are the buyers in a social system? (Panelists TBA) 

The odds of getting a small pilot is relatively high, but in order for the startup to survive and scale the pilot needs to grow significantly. The health startup ecosystem is absolutely packed with pilots and trials but where does a startup go from there? To continue our discussion of public funds with an ultimate positioning of the young business into the private payer market, this panel will focus on the criteria and adoption rates of insurers and other private entities. What is the approach, how tightly are the public guidance and regulatory frameworks impact the health innovation adoption.

20:10  So where is pharma in all this? 

Certainly the pharma industry business model has been and will continue being disrupted so what are some examples on how some of the key players adapting? In this 15 minute presentation, Bayer will present their new and exciting Grants4Apps program which is now open for submissions.

20:25  Wrap up and closing comments

20:30  Drinks & Networking sponsored by Grants4Apps

This event is organized by Health 2.0 Amsterdam, DigtaleZorg, PHS Capital and Bayer's Grants4Apps teams 

RSVP NOW

[eugeneb]

#Science & #Startups : Health, Wellness, Habits and. Genes

We had a great and intimate event at IJsfontein last week. In our exerted effort to combine science and startups this year, we had two great speakers: Prof. Meike Bartels from Department of Biological Psychology at VU University who presented us with the current state of the art on effects of genes on the overall happiness and wellbeing. Going all the way back to 1988 with Tellegen presenting findings that almost 50% of human happiness factor is contributed to genes, Bartel’s studies, as well as many others, confirm the impact with the ranges of 30-70% (seems like Kendler in 11 is an outlier with the  whopping 70%)

One interesting thing that grabbed my attention is the survey that was performed by Northwestern University and UMass: “Lottery winners and accident victims: Is Happiness relative?”. The study was performed across controls, winners and victims and took a qualitative measurement of their past, present and future outlook – result: “even though external forces are constantly changing our lives and our life goals, happiness is a relatively constant state”

The above pic is not related to genes at all, but I had to include this great visualization from a study performed across keyword activation and human emotions. Our Anne and Kasia pointed out that “Love and Happiness are almost the same!” 

Next up was a great speaker, entrepreneur and someone who years ago committed to being and staying healthy, Renato Valdés Olmos. He had one slide – “Move more with human” – which captures the founder’s motto to make moving more fun for everyone.  In 2012, Renato and Paul Veugen mapped out their vision (probably on a napkin like any other entrepreneur) and came up with Human.co which today helps you move for 30 minutes or more by using what everyone has in their pockets -  a mobile phone (currently only iOS). The journey he told us about inspired many in the room and we hope to hear more from him and the team on their developments!

Would love to hear more from you on how you are managing your habit changes!

[eugeneb]

Health, Wellness, Habits and.. Genes

To kick-off 2014, we are excited to talk about health and not health care. Most of us make New Year’s resolutions, set new goals and attempt to change our bad habits in order to enhance our wellbeing.

In recent years, wellbeing has become a topic of research across several scientific disciplines. A major force driving this broad interest is the association of wellbeing with physical and mental health and its possible pivotal role in socio-economic issues and economic development. There has been a fair amount of research into the underlying sources of individual differences in wellbeing and the overlap with health and behaviour. Genes seem to play a significant role and molecular genetic data support the heritability of wellbeing.

Furthermore, many products on the market tout to “auto-magically” help you change your habits. As BJ Fogg puts it: “People creating products need to understand how human behavior works.”

Without further adieu, we are excited to announce two great speakers for our “Health, Wellness, Habits and.. Genes” event:

Prof. Meike Bartels - Meike Bartels is Professor in Behavior and Quantitative Genetics at the Department of Biological Psychology and the Netherlands Twin Register, VU University Amsterdam. She holds a University Research Chair in Genetics and Wellbeing and published over 100 peer-reviewed papers of which several with a focus on the causes of individual differences in Wellbeing and the overlap with health and behaviour. During her presentation, Meike will provide an overview of the state of the art with respect to genes and wellbeing and the (genetic) overlap between wellbeing, behavior and health.

Renato Valdes Olmos - Renato Valdés Olmos is a co-founder and CEO of Human, a mobile app that helps people move 30 minutes or more, every day. By using passive tracking the app measures the amount of minutes that people move and motivates them to do the Daily 30, as the minimum amount of activity to stay healthy. Human was founded in late 2012, with Paul Veugen, in San Francisco, California. During his presentation, Renato will talk about how Human can help people to be healthier and happier.

Hope to see you there!

[eugeneb]

Health 2.0 Amsterdam: 2013 in review

It is time to rewind the clock and reflect on the last year at Health 2.0 Amsterdam. 

Without a further adieu: a brief recap of 2013

January: We started the year with Health & Habits event with VirtuaGym and Magic Mind. This was one of our best attended events since most people have new year's resolutions on how to live healthier and stress free! We will follow the same theme in 2014 but with some new presenters! Stay tuned

February: We focused on Rehabilitation & Recovery with new technologies and tools that are enabling both consumers and practitioners in this space with Doctor Kinetic who cleverly utilizes Microsoft Kinect and Fysio24 which enables remote physiotherapy sessions.

March: In March, we did something different with the WAAG Society and their sister organizations in London, Lisbon and Palestine. The topic was virtual care where we connected these remote locations via video conference and discussed the different needs of stakeholders in telemedicine. The event was very enlightening!

April: Digital Diagnostics was our next topic. In today's connected world, it is astonhsing to hear that close to 1M people still die form Malaria. Amplino, presented their mobile solution that brings the costs of these tests down to pennies. We also heard from EarlyDoc, that presents consumers with decision trees based on guidelines for symptom checking and health information. That same month we hosted an official TNW health startup pitch night with 8 presentations and one winner - AutiPlan

May: It should be about health, not healthcare and that is exactly the

topic we pursued in May. We all know eating healthy is key so we had Foodzy present their approach, followed by a great resource Zegelgezond

July: We all want to learn something when we meet so July was focused on CE certifications for your apps. We had two great and capable presenters Erik & Sofie. Erik from Synappz described the journey on the first CE rated app in NL and Sofie from Axon Lawyers did a more prescriptive (punn intended) session on what it all means.

October: Impact and action is key in healthcare, so our October event focused on how to take your idea to impact and we had 3 different options for you in no particular order.. Alex Fair from Medstartr gave a great overview of what is crowdsourcing, Steven Seuntjens from PHS Fund gave great feedback on what VCs are looking for and what startups should look for in their VC's and finally Oscar Van Dijk gave a great presentation on his entrepreneurial adventure and presented ZorgInc a newly formed incubator

November: Big kudos to Nell Watson from Poikos for delivering a very engaging presentation about 3D in healthcare, as well as to Ernst Jan Bos from VUMC on 3D printed cartilage. This was one the more fascinating presentations which I totally lost track of presenter's time!!

December: This invite-only event was the production of two talented and passionate individuals: Katarzyna Rabczuk (who you all know) and Nadine Bongaerts from Biotecture and it gathered key stakeholders and contributors in the field of Personalized Medicine - you all will hear more about the "Let's Make It Work" events in the coming year. This event was put together to stimulate the collaboration of healthcare stakeholders and improve the understanding of the potential of personalized medicine in NL.

Finally, we would like to announce that Paul Pelsmaeker from DigitaleZorg.nl is joining as a co-organizer to help us grow this community! Welcome aboard!

Thank you all for a great year and we are all looking forward to building this community with you all in 2014!

[eugeneb]

3D in healthcare: from organ printing to health & wellness

We usually run our monthly Health 2.0 Amsterdam events pretty tight on schedule with about 10-12 minutes per presenter leaving 20 minutes for a discussion. When it came to the topic of 3D in healthcare, I stopped watching the time... Intrigued, fascinated, mesmerized are just three words to express my state of mind. I hope others who attended, share my opinion.

Ernst Jan Bos, a PhD student at plastic surgery department of VUMC was a very eloquent and passionate speaker. While some of the pictures in the slides were pretty disturbing, they represented real patients and real problems for which the solutions today are not perfect, complex and error prone. I personally learnt something new: to date all the attempts of 3D printed cartilage (ears) use either cow or calf cartilage cells and about 250M of these cells are required. Using human cells has many challenges, including slow development, loss of potential when cultured and a requirement for very high concentration of cells.  Ernst Jan launched a crowdfunding campaign for a 3D printer and while the campaign itself was not successful, he ultimately got the funding to pursue clinical cartilage regeneration using cartilage and fat derived stem cells. We are hoping to hear back from him soon!

Nell Watson from Poikos rocked the presentation. She did not dive right into the product pitch, but really gave a passionate presentation and great background on what is happening in the world of 3D in healthcare. From titanium based, fashionable $6,000 prosthetics to bio printing and the role of convergence that will drive the future of personalized healthcare. While her initial drive for 3D body modeling was the need for customization of clothes, she quickly realized that there is so much more this technology can do for healthcare.

Who said 3D is hard? Using a regular SmartPhone or PC camera, a person needs to take just two pictures: one from the front and one from the side and then the magic happens at Poikos. This magic took two years to develop and there is still work to be done but it is amazingly accurate to 3MM and provides over 100 different measurements. Nell herself has not heard about Quantified Self till this past February, but has been using her own technology to do just that and in the process lost 15kg just by setting a goal for her shape. Her business model is B2B, for clients to embed this technology into other platforms and ultimately use 3D modeling for predictive analytics across disease types in combination with other data.

The tech is complex, and the journey is long but its not a sprint - its a marathon and with entrepreneurs like Ersnt Jan and Nell Watson, anything is possible.

If you have other great examples of 3D in healthcare please don't hesitate to comment or share with the group!

[eugeneb]

Best Intelligence is still human intellgience

I remember like it was yesterday: Cramped office somewhere downtown NYC, a big shared space with a printer in the middle of the room and me, on my knees connecting a faster baud modem for the 10 colleagues of mine to share an Internet connection over.  At the time I had no idea what sixdegrees.com was really all about, but what I did know is that they were taking the concept we have practiced in real life to the world wide web: finding people and things via our social connections. So I decided to look it up and to my surprise, SixDegrees.com “was one of the first manifestations of social networking websites in the format now seen today” (-Wikipedia). At the height of the business, SixDegrees amassed around 3.5M users who were all connected socially offline and now online, exchanging information, looking for movies, restaurants and discussing topics on the site’s bulletin boards across many different subject areas. In short, people were searching for answers.

Now lets fast forward over a decade: Facebook has over one billion users, Twitter boasts around 200M, LinkedIN with over 200M and the list goes on with Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and many more. At the same time, according to ScienceDaily, over 90% of world’s data has been generated in just the last two years!!!

So what does that mean for you and me?

That means, what was once called information, is now just a stream of data – attacking us from all sides. That means that information is no longer enough. What search engines provide today is just data that we, as humans, need to spend time analyzing and turning it into actionable information to make a decision.

So anytime we need to find anything we have two choices: search the web or ask a friend or a known expert. A study by Microsoft Research and MIT had some interesting results comparing search to asking question to your social network (in this case Facebook):

Experiment subjects searched on average 30.3 minutes for their search task. Imagine that – 30 minutes wasted!!!

By the time they finished their search, participants had an average of 1.4 responses already waiting and maximum of 5 – which tells me that I could have done a lot of other work that is piling up and have the answers come to me 

Your social connections are pretty quick with a minimum response of 5 minutes, median of 17 and an average of 188 (but that was due to an outlier about a PMP exam of 1519 minutes 

 – PMP? whats that?

This was a very limited experiment but we have been doing some benchmarking as well, so stay tuned for our own stats!

Un-artificial Intelligence (social intelligence)

Search technologies rely in sophisticated algorithms to give us the answers the machines think we want. Our mission as a company, is to help the human kind make sense of this fast paced, technologically driven world. While artificial intelligence is here to stay and improve, the best intelligence is still human intelligence  so instead of reproducing human brain in code, we are coding to extract value from your social and expert networks! Join in on the social intelligence!

As you can see, SixDegrees was an eye opening experience for me, I just didn’t know it back then!

Got questions, try Q! 

Got questions

[eugeneb]

Innovating Healthcare: From idea to impact

There are no shortage of ideas when it comes to changing our global healthcare system but as I have previously written: innovating healthcare is hard! So last week we gathered about 40 of our Health 2.0 Amsterdam members to discuss just that: how does an entrepreneur take his or her idea and see it flourish in a market that has political & regulatory pressures, resistance from incumbent forces and a lot of new competition.  There are many ways for an entrepreneur to make an impact and so we invited some experts to talk to us about their experiences in a natural progression.

Just and idea

Ideas are great but just and ideas is never enough, execution is key. While it became much less expensive to start a business, everyone needs some proof points and market research and acceptance. I am personally addicted to crowdfunding platforms and as an entrepreneur using such a platform to do some initial testing in the marketplace goes a long way. So we kicked off with Alex Fair who is a good friend of mine from Health 2.0 NYC days and a CEO of Medstartr, a crowdfunding platform for health.

He initially scared me with 50+ slides but surprisingly we breezed through them pretty quickly. While technology was not on our side us with  cross-pond-Skype communication difficulties, I think we still retained a good amount of content including how we can all go from “Geek to Freak to Hero”. Medstartr message is simple and clear:  “predicting success in healthcare is difficult which constrains capital, limits innovation and makes healthcare less effective” and that as consumers and stakeholders we generally don't have a say in what gets funded.  So in short

1. Get an idea

2. Run it by some friends and

3. Ask the crowd that cares.

While crowdfunding is not for every project, it is an avenue to get your idea of the ground.

You can find Alex's slides on SlideShare

MedStartr at Health 2.0 Amsterdam, Oct 9, 2013 from FairCareMD.com, MedStartr.com

Word of advice from serial entrepreneur

Oscar van Dijk is a serial entrepreneur that has taken many ideas and turned them into real businesses. While he is relatively new to healthcare due to personal reasons he is already making an impact in Netherlands with the soon-to-be launched ZorgInc which is a Dutch ehealth incubator and is part of the Dutch eHealth Fund which is a public-private fund that is under development. Oscar relayed to us is that timing is everything but also that  finding the right balance between going fast (burning through cash, resource and technology scaling issues) and going slow (potential to lose out to competitors)  are both key issues to consider when accelerating your startup.  There are really two strategies in fund raising:

1. Raise all the money you need now or

2. Get just enough money to get to the next financeable milestone.

To get funded there is also a progression starting with family & friends, own savings but don't overlook subsidies and contests. (Health 2.0 runs many challenges – check them out)

We will post a link to Oscar's slides separately.

The world of venture capital

Steve Seuntjens is a great supporter of our meetup and the Health 2.0 movement. As a partner at Personal Health Solutions, which is a venture firm investing in health & wellbeing he had some really great advice to the entrepreneurs. First and foremost – you may not need the capital, so why dilute yourself if you don't have to. Secondly while venture capital is often called “vulture capital”, finding  a strategic partner and not just a funding source is key to extract the most value for the founder and the investors.

Venture firms have tremendous contacts in the industry and can offer a lot of help to the young companies that are poised for growth. But an entrepreneur needs to understand which stage they are in and one of the aspects that a VC looks for is the ability to build a great team and a sustainable business. PHS specifically, also looks for a science-based startups that power a whole market segment and not just chasing trends.

Steve needed no slides :)

Hope you all enjoyed the meetup and as always feedback is appreciated. It is your community!

[eugeneb]

Fear drives complacency & 5 ways to overcome it

Innovation is risk - risk drives fear and fear drives complacency.  Not to sound cliché, but I will use Franklin D. Roosevelet’s famous quote: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

We live in a world of uncertainty and that is the only thing that is constant - so fear is a natural human behavior that wakes up during uncertainty and most of us will have some degree of fear at some point in time.  I know I did and still do but there are ways to overcome it.

1. Friends & Family Support

It has been a little over a year since I decided to go out on my own with ICG (Inititum consulting Group), leaving a large company after 10 years and together with the family stay right here in the great city of Amsterdam. At the time, everything seemed to go against the grain: the job I was interviewing for fell though, my current company required me to move back, extending our residency in Netherlands was not an overnight task and on top of it all my wife's beloved grandmother passed away. The heart was saying to move back, get another job - but my gut was saying something different.  I love my wife @apaperie for supporting me through this journey and the kids @adeenchick & @shaineebaby adapting and adjusting as quickly as they have. Fear was certainly there, fear of an unknown country, fear of landing contracts with my strongest contacts mostly in US. The complacency reaction of moving back to our house, a regular job seemed like the best choice at the time but it is only with the support of family & friends that the fear was forced into a cave and we are happy and not looking back.

2. Even a mentor needs a mentor

I mentor at BluePrintHealth (NYC) and HealthXL (Dublin) but also advise other companies. It is easy to dish it out, but the logical advice that is given to others sometimes escapes the common sense when it comes to your own initiatives. Some people feel pride and embarrassment to seek advice - they lock up and bathe in their own thoughts, but mentorship at any age and career stage is important. When launching ICG I had many conversations with mentors who supported me and provided me with invaluable advice on services, market entry and specific clients to tackle. Don't forget that even a mentor needs a mentor! Having said that, your own passion, drive, analysis and gut are still key to making yourself successful and driving out fear…

3. Passion & Focus

Grand ideas are great and when the energy level is high there is no limit to how many new ideas your brain will generate at random times of the day. One key to remember is that once fear takes hold, your brain either wants to shut down and crawl back to the complacency cave or pursue everything under the sun to minimize risk. Focus, focus, focus and exert your energy on the ONE thing that makes you get up in the morning. In the last year I started a consulting company, a non-profit and another startup with an old friend in social media space and will not mention a number of other initiatives that I got involved in.  Planting seeds is important - some you need to nurture, some die and some blossom but focus is key. In my case, something had to give so Marina now is solely focused on Future Of Health Foundation (so if you want to get involved reach out to her at marina at futureofhealth.eu). I now have dropped everything but ICG and Color Eight (more to come on that).

4. Stay positive

Our brains love storytelling but during the times of fear this story telling has a strong bias towards negative creation. So instead of playing a story about how you will fail, turn it around and force a story of success or a successful recovery from failure. Another cliché, but C.S. Lewis puts it nicely: “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement”.

5. Hustle

Yep, simply hustle! Get out there and face your fear! Talk to potential clients, mentors and colleagues. Push yourself to a new comfort level zone because the old one equals complacency, but complacency does not bring certainty! Got other ways to fight fear?  Would love to hear your thoughts!

[eugeneb]

Health 2.0 Startup Pitch night: and the winner is...

On April 24th, Health 2.0 Amsterdam hosted a TNW Conference side event at DesignThinkers Amsterdam. The room was packed with our Health 2.0 members, 5 judges and the 6 healthcare startups. We picked only 6 startups to give each one of the founders detailed feedback and to ensure that aside from 500 Euro prize they also get the invaluable feedback from our judges but also from diverse audience that Health 2.0 brings together every month.

Without a further adieu, I wanted to introduce each of the startups in no particular order and provide my personal feedback to each one of them (since I kept my mouth shut during the pitch) 

Janno Barlage is not a newcomer to our Health 2.0 Amsterdam events. Fysio24 provides live 24/7 physiotherapy whenever and wherever people need it. I am a huge believer in care anywhere and see a value in disrupting existing brick & mortar care institutions and hence we decided to give Janno the stage again given that his company did open the "virtual doors" to customers. Janno & Petwin have built an interesting platform and certainly opens up the doors for physiotherapists to provide additional care outside of their normal working hours but their challenge will be the consumers. Both from the audience and the judges, there was some skepticism on the consumer adoption of this. I think Fysio24 would server well as a lead generation tool for initial consultation which COULD be done online then followed with a transaction fee to the physiotherapists. But time will tell.. I would be willing to pay €20 for an initial consult on my own time and in comfort of my own home (probably evening hours)

@Fysios24 & fysio24.com

Ger Apeldoorn was driven by a personal family need to start AutiPlan, which is an app targeted for parents with autistic children. Ger's presentation was focused and the product need is clear and concise. AutiPlan already has some great numbers to show, with over 6,000 registrations and almost 250K activities planed through their platform. The challenge now for AutiPlan is to scale this. There were suggestions from the audience to expand to other diseases such as dementia, which certainly could benefit from this tool but focus will remain key for this young company. Expanding to institutional payers such as schools and support organizations will be key to their adoption. Also while the app is available in three languages, with a focus on institutional expansion - keep the focus on the local market prior to investing into other countries.

@AutiPlan & AutiPlan.com

Jelte's mission with Pyoupil is to tackle dyslexia through early detection using smart tracking. I think everyone enjoyed a very focused approach for a very particular need and the idea to prove the model in Netherlands where the adoption of school sponsored devices in schools is on the rise. As the judges pointed out, Jelte and team needs to really focus real hard on the algorithms that can help drive this mission. One challenge that we all saw is the all-encompassing tracking of all kids to identify potential dyslexia problems - which is a tall order but nothing is off limits for young passionate entrepreneurs! Hope Jelte will keep us posted on his developments. 

@Pyoupil & Pyoupil.com

The Nutrino guys came as a team and prior to our event got finished practicing for their TNW conference pitch. Yaron's presentation was very polished and certainly intriguing but our audience hopefully helped them to fine tune their pitch for the big TNW event. Nutrino is in a very crowded space but also a space that needs to be cracked in order to improve healthcare. Caloric input is a very manual process and there are many companies that are focusing in this space. Nutrino's proposition, while intriguing packs a big punch with many features in the product already with more to come. Along with the judges, I agree that focusing in a particular geographic area and core capability of matching and producing a nutritional advice is what the Nutrino team needs to stick with. Dont create a sparcity and scarcity problem guys! Hope your pitch went well at TNW and keep us posted.

@NutrinoCo & Nutrino.co

I found Frederic by accident on angel.co and was immediately intrigued. His pitch started with a line from The Boston Post circa 1865: "Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value". Frederic and the team at Holland Haptics is designing a technology for touch communication. Frederic is still exploring potential markets and many decisions have to be made around the particular industry, licensing model, distribution channels and many more. This took the team on a tangent around gaming and pornography use-cases but the most important message for Frederic was to think BIG!!

@FredPetrignani & HollandHaptics.com

Filippo presented WALK, which is an airbag that could prevent injuries in elderly. Unlike the known hip protectors on the market, this prototype device is lightweight and unobtrusive as well as already based on a technology that is used in the Nordics for bicycle injuries. We all enjoyed the concept but one of the main risks that we saw is that the technology will be licensed form the original manufacturer so those negotiations would need to be very solid to ensure exclusivity in certain markets and specifically in the healthcare industry. The target market for Filippo and team would certainly be the informal caregivers concerned about their parents or grandparents but one of the audience members suggested long term care facilities especially focused on alzheimer's and dementia.

And the winner is......

  It was a tough decision but the €500 from from Initium Consulting Group was awarded to AutiPlan. Congrats Ger & Wouter!

But Jacco Schutte made everyone a winner by providing a unique opportunity for our 6 startups to meet with executives from Menzis.

Hope everyone enjoyed the event with many more to come!

[eugeneb]

Health 2.0 Amsterdam Startup Pitch Night

Health 2.0 Pitch Night is already next week (Thursday, April 24th) and we would love to share more information with you!

The event will start around 17h00 and last about three hours (including drinks and time to chat). As it is an official TNW side event, we will finish the night with an after party, celebrations and further networking along the other happenings of the day: the place is to be determined!

The deadline for submissions has been extended to this Sunday, April 21st at midnight! So now you have time to crunch some slides together over the weekend and apply!

We are also happy to announce our panel of judges who will evaluate, support, connect and laugh with you next week:

Stephen Seuntjens

Stephen Seuntjens, is a Partner in Personal Health Solutions, a venture firm investing in early and mid stage businesses in the area of health &wellbeing. He has over 20 years of global experience in building and developing new businesses, both organically as well as through M&A (buy & sell). He has worked and lived in Minneapolis, Tel Aviv, London and Amsterdam. This experience includes both executive positions in multinationals as well as entrepreneurial endeavors. Companies he has supported include Mind CTI, and Israeli-based, Nasdaq-listed software billing provider; Shapeways, as US based portal company allowing creatives to realize their objects through 3D printing and Directlife, a Dutch company part of Royal Philips Electronics, motivating individuals to become more physically active through monitoring and coaching.

Prior to PHS Capital, Stephen Seuntjens was CEO of Philips Lifestyle Incubator. The Lifestyle Incubator invests in both service and product concepts within the wellbeing / consumer health domain

Jacco Schutte

Jacco is a healthcare innovator and strategist. He obtained his Masters (MSc) degree in Biomedical Sciences at the Radboud University. Additional, he received training in health care innovation as a project member at ParkinsonNet and as product manager at MijnZorgnet. Currently Jacco is working on business development and (health) innovation strategies at Menzis, a health Insurance company with 2.1 million clients and 2200 employees. He gets inspired working on network organizations, mass customization and creating an experience economy within healthcare. Furthermore he loves to climb, playing drums and initiating all kinds of social activities. 

Anne Bruinvels

Anne is the founder of Px HealthCare, a company developing online, multi-media products for people with chronic diseases providing them with individualized, practical support. Px HealthCare is a social enterprise that puts helping patients and conducting medical research above profits. Anne also heads Elixior, an advisory company focused on the development and growth of innovative personalized medicine businesses.  Previously, Anne founded Curidium, a personalized medicine company focused on identifying companion diagnostics and therapeutics to treat patients with central nervous system disorders more effectively. She started Curidium’s business activities in 2001 and raised several rounds of angel funding before taking the company public on the AIM of the London Stock Exchange in 2006. Prior to that Anne held various research and business development positions at Pharmagene (now Asterand), SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (now GlaxoSmithkline), Wyeth (now Pfizer) and Sandoz Pharma (now Novartis). She obtained her PhD (neuroscience) from Utrecht University (the Netherlands). She was presented with the London Biotechnology Network “Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award” in 2003. Tim Schuurman

Tim is an experienced and result-oriented Service Innovation Consultant with a strong commercial drive. With a MBA and MSC in Business and Financial Management, he has years of experience with designing and implementing services in diverse industries. Among other, Tim is a Partner at DesignThinkers which is now one of the leading design driven innovation agencies helping organizations around the world making the transition from being strictly product orientated and sales driven, towards being service orientated and human centered. Tim facilitates the Design Thinking Network, a fast growing network of professionals from every continent, and an innovation network for corporate change agents called DesignersDNA. Tim is also a co-founder of CareToDesign, a human centered healthcare service delivery collective and teacher at Design Academy Eindhoven. Nick Stevens

Nick is a British expat living in The Netherlands. Kite flying entrepreneur, business director, Startup Weekender, Mac lover, and part time coffee snob. After many years living a life of corporate business operations, Nick now runs his own companies and recently opened a coworking space. Nick has seen, heard and judged thousands of idea pitches and company presentations across 19 Startup Weekends and other similar events, including events tailored to Healthcare and Education.

The judges will be asked to watch  five-minute pitches, provide constructive feedback and then decide on the startup that will be awarded a 500 Euro prize sponsored by Initium Consulting Group. 

 Looking forward to seeing you on the 24th!