Demo Day highlights healthcare innovations

The transformative power of the Eshelman Innovation Venture Studio was the throughline of the Digital Health Demo Day, a showcase of five healthcare ventures held March 26 at UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Bell Hall. In the audience were entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other potential investors.

The five ventures offer a range of healthcare improvements: access to mental health care, opioid overdose prevention, employment for individuals in substance-abuse recovery, fewer unnecessary surgeries and safer IV medications.  

And they all fall somewhere along the venture continuum. The three newest ventures are emerging from the incubation stage; two earlier ventures have progressed into startup companies, fulfilling the Eshelman Innovation mission of turning ideas into healthcare products and services that improve peoples’ lives.  

One of the startups, Goldie Health, is saving lives by preventing overdoses across North Carolina and in Baltimore. The startup hopes to close its third round of venture financing this spring, a step that will enable more growth and more lives saved.

“The Eshelman Innovation Venture Studio gives you this opportunity to tackle really challenging theses,” said Goldie Health co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Matt Hanis. “Trying to reduce opioid overdoses is a thorny, complicated problem. Our ability to speed from an idea to actually launching a product happened a lot faster than it would have happened outside of Eshelman Innovation.”

Goldie, Hanis said, would not have been possible without the support of the Venture Studio ecosystem.

“Our ecosystem takes ideas from discovery to venture-scale companies using the Venture Studio model,” said Eshelman Innovation Venture Studio Managing Director Bob Dieterle. “We look for impactful digital-health research throughout the university and even beyond. And if we believe that research is scalable into an investable startup, we’ll ask the faculty member to make a commitment and actually build the venture with us over six months.” 

The venture studio process differs from that of venture capitalists, who simply invest in companies. The Eshelman Innovation Venture Studio actively creates companies to address specific societal problems — and then supports them as they scale up for maximum impact. 

“We train faculty in entrepreneurship. We train them in best-class venture building,” Dieterle said. “We have partners like Amazon Web Services that help us ensure that these solutions are HIPAA compliant out of the gate. We have a great Industry Advisory Board that pressure-tests these ventures along the way to make sure that they’re moving into an exciting area. And then we help de-risk them any way we can.” 

Dieterle challenged the Demo Day audience to engage with innovators from all five teams.  

“We purposely invited all of you here because you play such a big part of the innovation ecosystem,” Dieterle said. “It will be catalytic to these teams, especially the pre-spinouts, to start building relationships and get help in any way they can. Maybe you’ll help them with their first sale. Maybe you’ll help them build their operating team. Maybe you’ll help them with their go-to-market approach. Or maybe you even want to do some diligence and potentially invest in these startups. That would be wonderful.”

Here is a round-up of the five innovations presented at Demo Day:

SONDER  

What it is: SONDER’s AI-enabled mental health platform uses biosensors to capture and analyze brain waves, heart rate, vocalization responses and other objective data.

What it does: Reduces provider bottleneck. Helps patients get to the right care faster.

Innovation stage: incubation

Innovator: Alana Campbell, assistant professor, UNC School of Medicine department of psychiatry

Says Campbell: “Current tools for understanding social-emotional processing rely on either subjective pencil-and-paper measures or time-consuming discussions with clinicians and intakes. We wanted to create an objective tool that takes the subjectivity out of it.” 

Valable

What it is: Valable’s workforce-retention platform connects individuals in substance-abuse recovery with recovery-ready employers.

What it does: Reduces early attrition and unlocks federal incentives during the critical first 90 days of employment.

Innovation stage: incubation

Presenters: Addiction medicine expert Dr. Shuchin Shukla, Goldie Health Chief Medical Officer; Thomas Bamforth, Eshelman Innovation Venture Building Program Consultant  

Says Shukla: “One in six Americans lives with substance abuse disorder. Research shows that people who are unemployed are 65% more likely to use substances compared to people who are employed. And likewise, people with substance use disorders are three times less likely to be employed. These two issues feed each other.”

First Principles Alliance

What it is: First Principles’ AI-enabled intelligence platform defines medical expertise and “learns” continuously to improve outcomes in high-stakes clinical decision-making.

What it does: Reduces harmful and costly unnecessary surgeries, including an estimated $6B in unneeded spinal procedures.

Innovation stage: incubation

Innovator: Neurosurgeon Dr. Tony Asher, president of the Prisma Health Neurosciences Institute  

Says Asher: “Our platform creates value across the healthcare ecosystem. Patients gain equitable access to credible expert guidance and improved outcomes. Physicians benefit from benchmarking, collective learning and validation of expertise. Health systems and payers reduce unnecessary procedures, improve patient experience and lower cost. Industry and regulators gain insight into treatment effectiveness and opportunities for innovation.”

Goldie Health

What it is: Goldie’s overdose prevention platform helps agencies detect at-risk individuals and provide them with a low-friction plan of care tailored specifically for them.

What it does: Saves lives.

Innovation stage: Series A startup

Presenter: Matt Hanis, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer  

Says Hanis: “We don’t just have an app. We have created a care network. Think of it as an infrastructure of care.”

Nuvai Medical Technologies

What it is: Nuvai’s AI-enabled video systems analyze video feeds of technicians preparing IV medicines and prepping for surgery to ensure aseptic compliance.

What it does: Significantly reduces risk of infection. Enhances patient outcomes.  

Innovation stage: Series Seed startup

Innovator: Stephen Eckel, associate professor, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy

Says Eckel: “Whether you’re a patient or you have a family member as a patient, you want to ensure that any IV medication that you are receiving has been made aseptically.”