more than 10 healthcare provider groups, including Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Novant Health, a hospital network in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia. Next month, Ginger.io is running a pilot with Novant to test how its product performs for patients with diabetes and depression. In one phase, the technology will alert a caregiver when a diabetic patient may be in a down state; in another, it will try to identify which patient a team of nurses should reach out to in a given day.
“We have to prove we can reduce cost,” Singh says.
In recent years, Khosla Ventures has been known for its investments in cleantech and sustainability startups, plus high-profile tech companies like Square and Bitly. But it also has made bets on health-tech and mobile startups such as ZocDoc, Jawbone, AliveCor, and CellScope. So its latest investment is in good company.
Ginger.io is still relatively small, with 11 employees, but it is looking to add staff on both coasts in business development, sales, and engineering. Meanwhile, the company continues to sing the praises of New England in terms of its health IT community. “There’s no doubt Boston is the hub of healthcare innovation. We ended up bicoastal mostly for personal reasons,” Madan says.
Singh adds that the Boston community “taught us two things in particular. We started as more of a direct-to-consumer model, but we learned very quickly, from our enterprise partners, that [business to business] can be a very successful approach in healthcare and health IT.”
And the second thing? Well, it has to do with building a real business around some very real science—which is still a work in progress for the startup. As Singh puts it, “Sometimes it is worthwhile to take the slightly longer route to get the validation you need.”
