UW Bothell hosts HealthStartup weekend
Published 4:16 pm Wednesday, May 20, 2015
More than 100 people participated in the UP Global’s HealthStartup Weekend at the UW Bothell campus, May 15-17, with around half of those there presenting ideas to better the health industry.
On Sunday, the ideas were judged, after approximately 54 hours of brainstorming and idea development, such as medical devices, healthcare technology including wearables, pharmaceutical sciences, consumer health apps, nutrition and more.
“I’ve said the same thing to many of the attendees as they were leaving: ‘Now that you see what a focused team can do in a weekend, imagine what you can do in a month or two! Let this be a beginning,'” said Brian Crouch, lead organizer of the HealthStartup Weekend. “All I could think was how in ten years, these companies will look back at this event [and think] ‘That’s where we got started,’ and we’ll be part of each other’s stories.”
The winners of the inaugural HealthStartup weekend first had to be narrowed down from 33 ideas to 12 semi-finalist ideas. But, in the end, there can be only one (winner).
Winners received one hour of legal advice from Foundry Law Group, one hour of small business consulting from the Kenmore Business Incubator, three hours of marketing and business strategy from the Avatar Group, 10 free hours at Startup Hall, a review of their business application and, for the top team, two tickets to the 8th annual Washington State Biomedical Device Summit on Sept. 24 at the UW Bothell campus. The second place winner will get one ticket to the summit.
Entrada took first place for connecting patients who may benefit from emerging medicines with the clinical drug trials for that particular treatment.
LyfeKare won second place for their mobile application that helps people, whether individuals or families, stay healthy by using intelligent medical management, including potentially dangerous interactions.
NueVizion went home with third place for enabling people to test their own vision and get lens prescriptions from anywhere in the world through their mobil application.
The Health Startup Weekend also offered lectures from local healthcare businesses, including co-founder of Mobisante, Sailesh Chutani.
“I’ll focus on my journey starting Mobisante: everything that it takes to get a startup up and running and into the marketplace—from funding, product creation, distribution, sales and marketing,” Chutani said to Pam Miller of Numoon Communications and UP Global (the organizer of the event) of his Friday speech. “My hope is that potential entrepreneurs who are on the fence will make the leap, learn new skills and techniques, and help grow the eco system. There’s so much learning that happens through Seattle’s network.”
While this year’s HealthStartup weekend is already past, there’s plenty of time to start working on next year’s big thing in healthcare business ideas.
“We envision doing this next year, probably in the first quarter,” Crouch said. “I’m looking forward to sharing the inspirational success stories from the first event, there will be several new companies, lots of new jobs, and people whose lives and health benefited from using those products.”
Events like this couldn’t have been possible without all the efforts put in by the volunteers, supporting organizations and those who participated in the event.
