Examples of Health Startup Opportunity

Anyone that is part of the healthcare IT and EMR world has to realize that we’re in a really incredible time for healthcare IT and EMR. There’s has never been more energy, excitement and actual investment in the Healthcare IT world than there is now. If you don’t believe me, buy your ticket to Las Vegas and attend HIMSS 2012 and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean. I have a feeling that HIMSS Las Vegas is going to be bigger than ever with more money flowing as well.

Just to provide a few examples of what’s happening, the prominent IT investor Esther Dyson has invested in 20 Health IT investments. That’s a whole lot of investment in healthcare IT. She obviously sees some real opportunities available at this time in health IT.

Another recent announcement was the recent batch of 15 Rock Health Startup companies. This is just one of at least 3 or 4 health focused incubators out there. Plus, the latest batch of health IT startup companies from Rock Health even has Neil Versel singing their praises after a previous not so glowing review of the health startup incubator (or health accelerator if you prefer).

One other thing that is easy to underestimate is the value that the US government is putting on supporting healthcare innovation through entrepreneurship. Normally I’m as skeptical as anyone in putting any sort of faith in government to produce results. I still think they have their hands tied in a lot of things, but I give a lot of credit to Aneesh Chopra, Todd Park and Farzad Mostashari for doing their very best to kick against the challenges of big government while enabling health entrepreneurs to be successful.

Priya Ramachandran wrote about an example of one initiative the government is putting forward to help entrepreneurs: Access to Public Health Data. Every time I hear someone talk about the data that’s available from these public repositories of health data, the entrepreneur inside of me kicks in with ideas on how to use that data for good.

It is a really tremendous time to be an entrepreneur in healthcare. I do think we still need a better platform for health IT startups to launch their products and get funding. I have a few ideas I’m working on in this regard. More on this in the future.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

2 Comments

  • I agree with you that it’s an exciting time, but that more measures are needed to boost smaller tech startups. Maybe some government grants or initiatives perhaps? It’s difficult for smaller companies to acquire a HIMSS membership or attend the large conferences.

  • Sarah,
    Yes, the government could do a lot more. However, they aren’t often very good at it. That’s why some of the things they’ve done recently have been worthy of note. They do have money for innovation if you can get through the government grant writing process.

    As far as HIMSS, I think HIMSS should do more to support startup companies. Free access to the conference and/or membership would be a start since you’re right that most startups can’t afford access.

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