The first-ever
Startup Weekend Health yielded solid business ideas, most of which addressed the gap in communication between patients and care providers. The weekend's winner,
QuickSee MD, was no exception.
Helping users choose appropriate on-demand medical care, the QuickSee team was an early pick by judge Kimberly Eberbach, VP of Wellness and Community Health at Independence Blue Cross. IBX, incidentally, was one of the sponsors of the weekend, held at
Venturef0rth at 8th and Callowhill.
Also on the judging panel was Philly Startup Leaders President Bob Moul, a veteran of Startup Weekend judging, who reported that more so than normal, fledgling companies were very tightly clustered and the final debate to choose the winner got intense.
QuickSee MD is an obvious choice for IBX as a potential white label solution, and the startup will take part in the upcoming
IBX Game Changers Challenge. QuickSee MD has many parallels to
iTriage, a Denver-based startup formed in 2008, and purchased by Aetna. QuickSee also won the honor of audience favorite, as determined by the decibel level of cheers on an iPhone app. QuickSee has set up a
twitter account but has not yet tweeted, and has no active website as of this writing.
"There is almost a religious feeling here," said Jarrett Bauer, CEO of Basic Health, a soon to be launched startup. This was Bauer's first Startup Weekend. While he ultimately decided to remain a spectator, he was impressed with the fervor of the teams.
Second place went to
HealthHereNow, a smartphone app that sends health oriented location based alerts, and
Food Mood, an easy way to log mood before and after eating, took third. A total of 85 attendees teamed up to present ideas for 12 health care-related startups.
Other standouts included
Stump The MD, a social website to crowdsource medical education with parallels to the legal education platform
ApprenNet (out of Drexel Law);
Beverage Buddy, aimed at curbing sugary drink intake and obesity, and
CareProsper, which incentivizes patient data sharing.
On a related note, Venturef0rth continues to increase its ranks, and will soon announce the arrival of several recently funded, high-profile startups.
Source: Bob Moul, Elliot Menschik, Jarrett Bauer, Startup Weekend Health Philadelphia
Writer: Sue Spolan