Meet the JSF Fall 2022 Cohort!
Today, we’re announcing the final Jumpstart Foundry cohort of 2022! The addition of the JSF Fall 2022 Cohort brings our total number of 2022 portfolio additions to 35— a chart-topping number for JSF! The JSF team is excited for the future with the addition of our newest cohort, and we can’t wait to see how each company will MAKE SOMETHING BETTER® in healthcare.
The companies in the cohort include Add Your Labs, Bearabill, Behaivior, bekome, CareCrown, CliniSpan Health, Healthible, HiPR Innovation, Hush Biomed, mign, My Smile Choices, NewGait, Pilleve, Sanitas Health, Thaddeus Medical Systems, VidaEats, and Vizrom.
Read below for descriptions of each company!
Add Your Labs
Founders: Frank Adamo, David Haines
Add Your Labs is an innovative technology company building solutions exclusively for medical/clinical laboratories. The Add Your Labs mission is to improve the quality of healthcare while lowering costs with the development and adoption of their software technologies. Their customizable software solutions help medical testing labs achieve greater operational efficiencies with customized automated and integrated workflows.
Frank Adamo, Founder and CEO, has 19 years of experience in healthcare (clinical testing) at Abbott Labs, J&J, and PerkinElmer. Adamo developed & launched new clinical testing products globally. Founded (2017) and launched (2020) Visible Genomics. Founded and launched Add Your Labs (2020).
David Haines, Co-Founder and Lead Engineer, is the full-stack developer for Add Your Labs. Has experience teaching full-stack development to military personnel, and history of product development in healthcare and integrated clinical testing. David is motivated to apply his skills to prosocial development.
Bearabill
Founders: Kanti Sunkavalli, MD MBA, Forrest Satterfield
Bearabill is focused on providing accessible advocacy for medical billing. Utilizing computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence, their financial healthcare dashboard automatically audits paper bills and digital transactions between patients, employers, healthcare providers, and insurance to provide deep insights and savings for both patients and businesses.
Kanti has more than a decade of medical and business experience having served as a Physician, published Clinical Researcher and a serial entrepreneur focused around healthcare technology. He is focused on using technology to bridge the medical care gap for those most in need and bringing ownership and empowerment to a patient’s medical care.
Forrest is a biomedical engineer and entrepreneur working to create low cost medical devices. He believes that success requires an equal balance between entrepreneurship and engineering. Forrest is always working to expand his perspective and expose himself to ideas that he can translate into his own work.
Behaivior
Founder: Ellie Gordon
Behaivior is a digital health company that is making mental health recovery and wellness more accessible using AI, behavioral health tech, and wearables for crisis aversion & mental health support, including return to use. Using a B2B model, they help people stay on track with their recovery process and wellness and help care providers better serve their clients. Recovery is an intelligent wearable digital wellness tool that can drastically reduce crisis events, offering a first-of-its-kind customizable, real-time solution allowing for round-the-clock care.
Ellie Gordon, Founder and CEO of Behaivior, is a behavioral technologist, designer, innovator, and entrepreneur. For over 15 years, her work has primarily focused on improving people’s lives through technology. She has successfully created, organized, led, and managed teams for everything from hackathons and codefests, to other science-based startups and initiatives, to community development and research projects and she did a TEDx Pittsburgh talk as a behavioral technologist speaking about the design elements of what Behaivior is developing.
bekome
Founders: Shanna Traphoner-Liu, Vanessa Gottlieb Laudette, Nora Graham, Camila Smith
Bekome is a tech-enabled mental wellness program empowering people to regain control of their mental wellbeing journeys through an integrative approach. With only 125K mental health providers to care for the 250M+ adults in the US, there is a tremendous gap in availability of daily, proactive and preventative care in mental health. Bekome delivers personalized supplement regimens and integrative nutrition coaching that address the root cause of anxiety, daily and naturally.
Shanna Traphoner-Liu’s personal mental health journey has spanned over a decade, fueling her passion for making mental wellbeing accessible. Early in her career, she advised Fortune 100 clients as a management consultant in areas of workplace wellbeing before going on to obtain her dual degree from Northwestern University: an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and an MS in Design Innovation. Shanna also holds a Certificate of Nutrition Science from the Stanford School of Medicine.
Vanessa Gottlieb Laudette’s passion for mental wellbeing is born out of her own mental health experiences, which led her to found Bright Strides, an equine and art therapy mental health non-profit. She aims to create broader, scalable impact within mental health, so she went on to obtain her MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, where she co-founded bekome. Vanessa holds a Certificate of Nutrition Science from the Stanford School of Medicine.
Nora Graham’s transformative experience as an early bekome customer led her to join the bekome team. She previously served as Director of Strategy & Operations at an enterprise technology startup focused on burnout prevention, in addition to founding Beam, a children’s mental health tech startup. She holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management and an M.S. Ed. from Bank Street College.
Camila Smith is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and owns a private therapy practice, Elation Wellness. She serves as Clinical Director to Bright Strides, an equine and art therapy mental health non-profit, and is an Adjunct Professor of Sociology & Psychology at the University of New Haven. She has dedicated her life’s work to advancing mental health, and is currently in the home stretch of completing her Doctorate of Health Sciences in Clinical Nutrition.
CareCrown
Founders: Zach Goldstein, Igor Kikena, Elizabeth Moss
Despite record demand for in-home care, homecare providers are turning away $15 billion worth of business because of staffing challenges. Yet successful operators have a secret advantage—they’re using recognition and rewards to attract and retain the best caregivers. They rely on CareCrown to motivate and reward their staff for achieving performance goals.
Zach has 7 years of product design experience with start-ups and large corporations like Asurion. He’s been actively involved in supporting founding start-ups since 2013, and is a Jumpstart Foundry alum.
Igor co-founded Healthcare Process Automation, an RPA company that won numerous awards from the Nashville Technology Council and was sold to Cognizant.
Elizabeth founded Caregivers by Wholecare, one of the largest non-medical homecare providers in TN. She has 25 years of experience as a leader in the industry and exited WholeCare when it was acquired by LightWay Home Health in late 2020.
CliniSpan Health
Founders: Dezbee McDaniel, Rashaad Galloway, David Lipsitz, MD, FACS
CliniSpan Health is a software and influencer platform for People of Color and underserved groups to access clinical research.
Dezbee McDaniel has been a career entrepreneur. He has founded or been an early team member with numerous startups. He is a former Venture for America fellow, Forbes Fellow, and recognized by Rock Health as Top 50 in Digital Health.
As COO of Clinispan Health, Rashaad has used his background in communication and marketing to build cultural competence into the clinical research process, allowing CliniSpan Health to reach a market of diverse individuals that has previously been untapped. Through his previous experiences as a start-up entrepreneur & consultant, Rashaad has been able to bring an innovative mindset to the clinical outreach.
Dr. Lipsitz has been a clinical researcher for 20+ years. He has been a Principal Investigator for 1000’s of clinical trials and has authored a variety of scientific publications. He sold his clinical research practice prior to working on CliniSpan Health full time.
Healthible
Founder: Ben Allen
Healthible is a new kind of digital therapeutic that is currently in stealth mode till 2023.
Ben Allen is an educator turned entrepreneur. He is focused on empowering as many people as possible with tech-enabled education tools that thrive in the attention economy.
HiPR Innovation
Founders: Harikrishan S. Sachdev, Koushalya S. Sachdev
HiPR Innovation is developing the first smart, proactive & dynamic wheelchair cushion system to prevent pressure ulcers in wheelchair users
Krishan Sachdev serves as co-founder and CEO of HiPR Innovation, Inc. Krishan has previously worked as a clinical researcher at Dell Children’s Medical Center researching a variety of conditions including pediatric pressure ulcer development.
Koshilia Sachdev serves as co-founder and Head of Operations at HiPR Innovation, Inc. Koshilia holds a B.B.A. in Supply Chain Management from The University of Texas at Austin. Koshilia gained valuable experience working at the intersection of health and business through her roles as a Clinical Operations Associate at UT Health Austin and as a Venture Fellow at GoAhead Ventures (a Silicon Valley based venture fund).
Hush Biomed
Founders: Dr. Todd Huber and Sammi Wyatt
Hush Biomed is dedicated to improving the quality of life of those suffering from tinnitus. Hush’s revolutionary medical technology and patient-guided approach provide modern treatment options customized to each individual patient.
Todd Huber, MD, is a co-founder, CEO, and Chief Science Officer of Hush Biomed. Todd has been in clinical practice, board-certified Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, earning numerous patient care awards in his career. His front-line view of the frustration of patients without a viable treatment option for their tinnitus led him to develop a novel and highly effective treatment for this all-too-common problem.
Sammi Wyatt is a co-founder, President, and Chief Operations Officer of Hush Biomed. Sammi is a second-generation board-certified Hearing Instrument Specialist with over 17 years of clinical experience with extensive work in operations and sales with organizations such as Eargo, Innerscope, and Beltone. Early in her career, she recognized a need to help the many that suffer from tinnitus, and she has made it her passion to find a solution.
mign
Founder: Lisa Tweardy
mign is the world’s first digital end:end process for creating personalized spine & sports medicine bracing at scale. Using a novel combination of an in-clinic body scan, corrective anatomical modeling and 3D printing, mign reduces precious clinical service time by up to 75%, delivering a bespoke design in days versus weeks.
Lisa is passionate about reducing preventable harm and accelerating the commercialization of new medical technologies. Over her 30+ year career in medical devices, she was VP Orthopaedics, UNYQ, CEO for Combat Medical, General Manager, Biomet Bracing, Vice President, Orthopaedics and General Manager, Spine at Ossur. Lisa has been awarded 19 patents, has published research in Spine and Journal of Neurosurgery, and earned an MSE from the Univ of Pennsylvania/Wharton and a BS from Lehigh University.
My Smile Choices
Founder: Mary Schreiber Swenson, PhD
What are my choices for high quality dental treatments, within and outside my geographical area, and at what cost? My Smile Choices is a dental marketplace that allows the patient to SHOP anywhere (within and outside their geographical area) for top quality dentists allowing side by side transparent pricing.
Dr. Swenson is the CEO & Founder of MyMedChoices | MySmileChoices, a global dental marketplace. Dr. Swenson has received a number of prestigious awards over the years in the advancement of women’s health to include the appointment to the Harvard University, Kennedy School Women’s Leadership Board and international speaking at the Global Summit of Women. She was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, US News & World Report, INC magazine and the Women’s Journal and won in 2021 the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Office of President Biden.
NewGait
Founder: Benga Adeeko, PE
MQT Innovations, Inc dba NewGait, is a movement company dedicated to helping people improve functional mobility. They are starting in the physical rehabilitation space with a device aimed at helping patients improve walking function in and outside the clinic.
Benga is an engineer and former collegiate athlete who initially developed an athletic training device for runners. After discovering a significant use case in the rehabilitation industry, he has turned his attention to improving mobility for individuals with walking impairments.
Pilleve
Founder: Gautam Chebrolu
Pilleve is building a suite of hardware and software tools to address controlled substance misuse and addiction to eventually become the clinic for controlled substances. Their main target are clinicians and healthcare organizations that are worried about liability and patient compliance (think ofthe downfall of Cerebral). After deploying their award-winning smart pill bottle, adding new services, and proving out their revenue model with billing codes, they are now scaling operations.
Gautam Chebrolu is currently the cofounder and CEO of Pilleve, a DC-based healthcare company focused on preventing the abuse of and addiction to controlled substances. Inspired by a familial history of substance abuse, he understands that this is a problem that affects everyone and can happen to anyone. With interests in various creative arts from audio and video production to writing and performance arts, human-centered design philosophies, and sustainable service, he hopes to hone in on developing truly unique experiences and redesign medical technologies to make them much more affordable and accessible and thus more effective.
Sanitas Health
Founders: Rodney Bell, Kacy Keys
Sanitas Health was founded with the mission of making mental health services and support radically accessible and inclusive for BIPOC and low-income populations. The Sanitas App is a culturally-responsive psychology-based language analysis platform for understanding human emotions, personalities, motivations, and psychology from everyday language as they relate to BIPOC populations.
Rodney Bell, Founder and CEO, is a seasoned entrepreneur and Healthcare innovator. As a healthcare technologist, Rodney observed that inequity in mental healthcare needs innovative solutions to remove barriers to care.
Kacy Keys, Co-Founder and VP, is a veteran start-up founder with 15 plus years of hands on experience navigating the US Healthcare System.
Thaddeus Medical Systems
Founder: Steve Scully, MD, PhD
Thaddeus Medical Systems makes the iQ-ler: the most durable, lightweight, connected cold chain system available in the world to transport and store temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals products & diagnostic specimens. The iQ-ler eliminates all risk in the shipping and storing of vaccines and biological therapies with less waste, while improving patient outcomes & experience..
Dr. Scully is Founder and CEO of Thaddeus Medical Systems, Inc (TMSI). As a M.D. / Ph.D. he is passionate about temperature control and tracking because it is a way to prevent Medical Errors in Clinical Pathology. He created the iQ-ler and SmartSleeve to eliminate pre-analytical errors, and improve patient outcomes.
VidaEats
Founders: Alana Benito, Luke Sagaser
VidaEats is a medical nutrition therapy company bridging the gap between chronic kidney disease patients and high quality nutrition care to help delay the need for dialysis. We are focused on connecting the patients who need care most with dietitians who specialize in their disease state. We partner with health plans and providers to give patients access to this high-quality, customized nutrition service.
Alana is a Registered Dietitian specializing in renal nutrition and VidaEats’ co-founder and CEO. Previously, she led a team of dietitians at DaVita and managed nutrition care for dialysis patients. She also has experience with payers and providers in the medical sales space. Alana lives in St. Petersburg, FL with her husband and dog.
Luke is a healthcare startup enthusiast with extensive digital product development, health tech innovation, and go-to-market execution experience. He is currently building startups in targeted nutrition, specialty pharmacy, and the Web3 space, as well as serving on the board of an early stage biotech company. He is a vintage guitar and drum collector, and resides outside of Philadelphia with his wife, Ellie.
Vizrom
Founder: Emmanuel Umoh
Vizrom is a technology startup company based in Birmingham AL. The company is developing a cloud-based content management application. A cloud-based digital signage application for healthcare-related organizations. Their in-patient room electronic whiteboard can be integrated with a hospital electronic medical record database to pull essential information to patients room. Information is displayed on a TV and updated in real-time.
Emmanuel Umoh is a third-time founder with years of experience in leading a teaming of developers for product development. An immigrant founder and a first-generation college student, Emmanuel has the responsibility for the attraction, engagement, development, and retention of Vizrom’s most asset – its customers. Emmanuel is also responsible for championing the mission of Vizrom and to unlock the potential of the team for the betterment of the company.
