The Pulse by Wharton Digital Health

In this episode, I sat down with Isabelle Kenyon, CEO and Founder of Calibrate. Founded in 2020, Calibrate is a metabolic health company on a mission to change the way the world treats weight. In August of 2021, Calibrate raised a $100M Series B round led by Founders Fund and Tiger Global. Since then, the company has hired hundreds of new employees and onboarded thousands of new patients, released its first Results Report, and geared up to launch its first enterprise clients. Isabelle and I discuss: 1) Isabelle’s own interactions with the healthcare system and why these experiences led her to commit to spending her career building a better, more consumer-centric system, 2) Why Calibrate’s emphasis on metabolic health represents a paradigm shift in how we treat weight loss and obesity, 3) Calibrate’s clinical model that combines medication, a holistic curriculum guided by synchronous 1:1 video coaching, and community, 4) The company’s plans to expand access to treatment through enterprise partnerships, and 5) Isabelle’s focus on developing both her own and her company’s self-awareness as Calibrate’s leader.

In this episode, I sat down with the co-founders of Equip, Kristina Saffran and Erin Parks, PhD. Equip provides virtual, evidence-based eating disorder treatment, and the company has expanded rapidly over the last few years. In February 2022, it raised a $58 million Series B funding round from The Chernin Group, Tiger Capital, General Catalyst, and other existing investors. Erin, Kristina, and I discuss: 1) how they met and why starting a company together was the right move, 2) what’s happening in a person’s body and mind when they have an eating disorder, 3) Equip’s family-based treatment model and the company’s holistic approach to defining access, 4) why virtual care works well for eating disorder treatment, and 5) lessons that Erin and Kristina have learned from each other as co-founders and their advice on navigating the co-founder experience.

In this episode, we sat down with Virgílio “V” Bento, Founder & CEO of SWORD Health. SWORD Health aims to bring world-class musculoskeletal (MSK) care to patients around the world by connecting members with physical therapists and digital therapists through a member app that combines sensor technology with telemedicine to prevent, relieve, and accelerate the healing of acute conditions, chronic pain, and post-surgical recovery. SWORD Health raised $163M in their latest Series D round led by Sapphire Ventures. This latest fundraising round brings SWORD’s valuation at $2B. We discussed Drawing inspiration for the genesis of SWORD Health after V’s brother got into a car accident and could not access the high quality physical therapy he needed for a speedy recovery. Delivering precision care through AI that generates personalized care plans for each patient with the guidance of physical therapists. How SWORD Health’s proven clinical model, created to address MSK-related issues, could target other conditions in the future.

This episode’s guest is Frank Cheung, CEO and Co-Founder of Cerebrae, a startup that aims to accelerate the adoption of value-based care by helping providers and payers measure, forecast, and validate the financial ROI of emerging approaches to patient care. Through this work, they aim to radically simplify the process of commercializing value-based care delivery. They are backed by several investors, including StepStone, Fika, Susa, TenOneTen, AME Cloud Ventures, Knollwood, Route 66, and SaaS Venture Capital.

Our guest on this episode is Stephen Smith, CEO of NOCD, a digital health company delivering high-quality virtual care for patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. NOCD performs over 140,000 virtual therapy sessions annually, and has established a community-driven model that connects patients around the world to peers and licensed therapists. Last year, NOCD raised a $33 million Series B round of funding led by F-Prime Capital and received their initial backing from 7wireVentures. In this episode, Stephen and I discussed: 1) His own experience searching for diagnosis and treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder and how this led him to founding NOCD. 2) How NOCD cares for patients with OCD and connects to patients who have not yet been diagnosed. 3) Why focusing on the OCD population positions NOCD well to attract top therapists and move to value-based care.

In this episode, we sat down with Jia Jia Ye, CEO & Co-Founder of Springtide Child Development, a company that provides integrative, evidence-based, and family-centered care for children with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. With four clinics open across Massachusetts and Connecticut, and a fifth coming soon, Springtide’s rapid growth is enabling families to better plan for the future, providers to focus on patient care in a coordinated environment, and payors to see what value-based behavioral care for ASD looks like. We discussed: 1) How Jia Jia developed a passion for working in healthcare and how the industry’s mission-orientation and the complexity of its problems have kept her engaged over time, 2) The elements of Springtide’s clinical model that differentiate it from how care for ASD typically looks, 3) The superior clinical outcomes and expanded access to care that Springtide is demonstrating as a result of its intentionally-designed care model, 4) What the future of Springtide holds and why the company is focused on closing the gap between behavioral and medical care, and 5) Jia Jia’s leadership style, why it works for her, and what she enjoys most about being the CEO of high-growth company.

In this episode, we sat down with Andrew Hines, Founder & CEO of Canvas Medical. Andrew and his team at Canvas Medical build software and APIs to power collaboration between caregivers and developers. Canvas Medical raised $17M in Series A funding in April, 2021. We discussed: Canvas Medical’s vision of building a software platform that connects electronic medical records (EMR) with clinician input that allows software developers to collaborate closely with practitioners and adapt workflows to accommodate evolving care models. The potential for Canvas Medical to facilitate idea exchange between ambulatory clinics and accelerate clinical research development by breaking down data silos. The importance for digital health startups to identify the user and the purchaser, and be critically honest about who would pay for the product or service.

In the latest episode of The Pulse Podcast by Wharton Digital Health, we interview veteran entrepreneur, Allon Bloch. His latest venture is K Health, a company that is seeking to democratize access to medical information. They do this by allowing users to interact with an AI chatbot that gives them access to data on how millions of people with similar symptoms were diagnosed and treated. On top of providing this information free of charge, they offer telehealth consultations at an industry leading (i.e., low) price point. During the episode, we discuss how K Health is able to offer telehealth services at such a low cost as well as Allon’s vision for the impact a platform like K Health can have on the dissemination of medical information.

In this episode, we connected with Yury Yakubchyk, the founder and CEO of Elemy. Elemy is an industry leading tech enabled provider of high quality pediatric behavioral care. Inspired by his own personal journey in overcoming childhood ADHD, Yury co-founded Elemy to repair the flawed model of care for childhood behavioral conditions such as autism. Under Yury's leadership, Elemy has grown from 109 employees at the time of the company's seed round to more than 1,000 employees at present. Elemy raised $219M in their Series B funding round, catapulting the startup to unicorn status with a total valuation of $1.15B. Elemy's investors include prominent names such as SoftBank, Chelsea Clinton, and Ashton Kutcher. We discussed: Inspired by the hustle of the informal economy of Queens, Yury co-founded two startups prior to Elemy. The common thread across all of his companies is solving a complex problem in an industry where consumers face many pain points. Elemy’s focus on caring for high acuity pediatric populations through a hybrid model of care run on an integrated software platform that coordinates caregivers physically visiting patients at home. The importance of destigmatizing mental health to accelerate the expansion of pediatric behavioral health services to more patients in need.

Our guest on this episode is Holly Maloney, a Managing Director at the venture capital firm General Catalyst, where she has a focus on healthcare specifically. She has invested across the digital health space, with companies including Cityblock, Olive, SonderMind, Transcarent, and, most recently, Ribbon Health.