I’ve known of the Health Care Originals team for more than 2 years and have been working with them as an advisor for more than 1 year now. As way of an introduction, I have been involved in technology-based product development for over 40 years – all the way from hands-on engineering to product management, eventually at the founder and investor levels. Through this time, I have been directly involved with over a dozen different technology startups - having co-founded a half dozen of them, 4 companies were directly involved in the medical / healthcare technology industry and 6 different companies were successfully acquired.
In addition to this, in my role as an executive of 3 different technology product development companies, I supported the development of initial products for more than five dozen other startup companies – nearly 30 of them in the medical device / healthcare industry alone.
That’s a lot of experience with what it takes to be successful in creating a new product in the healthcare industry. In my time working with the HCO, I’ve seen that the team’s approach to technology development is excellent. The best technology solutions seem elegant simple on the surface, regardless of how complex they may actually be, and the HCO team has done a great job of distilling a complex, first-of-its kind technological solution into a classically elegant and comfortable wearable that stands out not just for its usability but also its autonomy – computing on the device, which is called edge computing, versus what many other wearables do, which is stream raw data to the cloud.
Beyond that, the team has done a remarkable job of turning the proprietary data they develop into a care management platform that has been demonstrated as having truly outstanding impact on clinical outcomes in asthma and COPD. The magnitude of improved clinical outcomes, combined with a unique business model that focuses on ensuring improved outcomes combined with reducing healthcare costs is being deemed revolutionary.
The team has taken a thoughtful approach to technology development, has proved itself in 2 markets. The approach was pragmatic - first proving sustained outcome improvement before ramping up marketing and sales. Now, with a de-risked technology and proven clinical outcomes, they are seeing an increased adoption rate. The healthcare sales cycle is long, but even so, they’ve been able to shorten time to contract because they are truly differentiated.
I’ve been investing for more than technology companies for years and these are just some of the reasons I’m excited to lead this round on WeFunder.