Startup Insights: CorporateHealth

Continuing our Startup Insights campaign we have one of our Life-Sciences companies; CorporateHealth! CorporateHealth is founded in 2010, and is currently spread over offices in New York, Hamburg and Odense – quite cool! CorporateHealth uses standardized processes, cloud-platforms, big data, and the right service personnel to create the right model for disruptive technological innovation that addresses medical prevention. Elevator Pitch: CorporateHealth creates medical prevention services models that can scale. Innovative medical technology often fails to scale as the services to deliver it don’t match its value proposition. CorporateHealth uses standardized processes, cloud-platforms, Big Data, and the right service personnel to create the right model for disruptive technological innovation that addresses medical prevention. CorporateHealth’ CHECKUP offering is the first service in Denmark that uses home nurses, central diagnostic, and sophisticated IT to deliver video-capsule-based screening of the colon to test thousands of people at risk of colorectal cancer. Product/Service description: General: CHECKUP Home-delivered colon capsule endoscopy (HD-CCE) is an end-to-end service using a smart video capsule from Covidien – PillCam Colon 2 – to screen patients for colorectal cancer in the convenience of their home or similarly practical location. First specific service: “CHECKUP HD-CCE True-Positive” is an end-to-end service that uses HD-CCE to find those patients with a positive iFOBT result (from a rather unspecific test by participating in the Danish colorectal cancer screening program) that are truly positive. Only those will be send to the hospital for colonoscopy while all the false-positives will feel relieved. How it works: A patient with a positive iFOBT will be offered HD-CCE when their appointment for a colonoscopy is being made with the hospital. After receiving detailed information about the procedure and how to prepare they will have to make sure their colon is clean. Our nurses (via phone calls and emails) and our technology platform (via sundhed.dk automated workflow and SMS alerts) will help them and make sure they are ready for the procedure. When they are, the alert our nurse who will visit the patient e.g. at their home and provide the video capsule and help putting on the belt and reader that capsures the images in real-time. After making sure it moved successfully through the stomach into the colon (which takes some 20min), the patient can continue his/her day doing everything as usual – but not sleep. After a couple of hours (4-8) the capsule will dispose via the toilet and the patient returns the belt&reader. Our central diagnostic center will then analyze the video and flag any significant findings so that the prescribing doctor can decide on what to do next: Clear the patient, ask him/her to an immediate colonoscopy or advise on a return visit after the right period of time. Why did you apply for the Accelerace program? The Accelerace team has a unique mix of experts that are deeply embedded into the Danish healthcare system, that are experienced in working with start-ups and that have access to funding opportunities. Getting to work with these people not just in independent meetings, but as part of a structured program, makes Accelerace an excellent partner. How did your company start, and how did you get the idea? Cornelius Glismann started CorporateHealth as a purely Germany focused endeavor to provide personal medical checkup services to enterprise managers and executives. In a first pivot we tried to include capsule screening by addressing private patients into the general checkup programs. When Hagen Wenzek and Cornelius explored the business opportunities behind the different models we had the idea to take the capsule screening idea to the next level, abandon the traditional approach that found little interest and pursue the technology-driven full-service model that doesn’t rely on the incumbent stakeholders in the slow-moving healthcare system. The second angle is much more personal: Hagen’s mother had colorectal cancer at the same age that he was when I caught up again with Cornelius (2 years ago / 2013) and was due for a colonoscopy. Having learned about the risks of a colonoscopy and the (ridiculous) prices charged for them especially in the US where he lives (up to $8,500!), and then seeing the simple approach to screen for cancer with a video capsule meant something had to be done about it. Fun fact about your company: Cornelius lives in Hamburg, Hagen in New York and the company’s headquarters are now in Odense. Making the best out of an international set-up over multiple time zones is exciting in itself. Founder(s): Dr. Cornelius Glismann & Dr. Hagen Wenzek Employees: Nurses: Pernille Mahnfeldt, Jane Holt, Vibeke Baatrup. Pre-reading nurses in Hamburg: Kerstin Einsiedler & Claudia Werner Collaborating Chief Medial Officer: Eberhard Bart, MD. Assisting Doctor: Ursular Valentiner, MD. Hamburg Headquarters: Forskerparken 10A, Odense. Year Founded: 2010 (original CorporateHealth), 2015 CorporateHealth International ApS Website: Link]]>