GetHealthy Goes to SF for the Rock Health Conference

gethealthylogoGetHealthy, a New Orleans startup recently demoing at the Health 2.0 Inaugural Meeting, is heading next week to San Francisco for the annual Health Innovation Summit hosted by Rock Health, the premier Digital Healthcare Accelerator program in the nation.

The GetHealthy team is aiming to tackle healthcare at the level of small and middle-size businesses by offering a mobile wellness program individually tailored to the companies’ employees.

The metrics that are used target the diseases that pervade this country the most: chronic diseases. Obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease affect millions of Americans. Currently, 25.8 million people (12%) in the United States have diabetes and by 2050, about 1 in 3 Americans will have diabetes. Moreover, 69.2% of American adults are overweight or obese. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, where 26.5 million Americans have heart disease.

As a nation, 75% of our healthcare dollars goes to the treatment of chronic disease, which drives annual healthcare cost up at an alarming rate. Many of these chronic diseases can be improved by early preventative medicine, education, and lifestyle changes.

GetHealthy CEO, Blaine Lindsey tells us that lifestyle programs can be designed to dramatically alter the course of a chronic condition. The company is founded upon the findings of many recent peer-reviewed articles that studies how incentives and a mobile platform affects long-term lifestyle changes.

GetHealthy is leveraging these types of research and programs to bring intervention to potentially millions of people via human-centered design, group-based program, and mobile technology. By using a web technology, GetHealthy is hoping to provide scalable preventative care to many communities.

The GetHealthy program matches employees into small groups, which is facilitated by a Healthcare Coordinator trained in the GetHealthy protocol. Each curriculum is tailored to the individual’s needs. While progressing through the course, GetHealthy tracks their progress through various metrics, which include Blood Pressure, LDL (Low Density Lipoproteins), A1C, and RBS (Random Blood sugar). Patients are incentivized by allowing them to earn money that is pledged to them after they reach health and wellness targets. Moreover, patients are encouraged to maintain their healthy lifestyles after the program’s completion since the system provides education and a support network, which will stick with the patients for life. Currently, the start-up is completing a prototype at two locations In Lake Charles, LA and is in the process of initiating new partnerships in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana.

gethealthyssThe start-up was first envisioned by three local Co-Founders: Dr. William Kethman, Dr. Steve Springer, and Dudley Jacobs. Dr. Kethman is a Stanford Surgical resident, who recently graduated from Tulane Medical School.  During his time at Tulane, he invented SafeSnip, a low cost patent pending medical device that simultaneously cuts, clamps, and shields umbilical cords from infection. Dr. Steve Springer is a primary care physician from Lake Charles who cares for many patients with chronic conditions. Dudley Jacobs is an experienced entrepreneur and has founded two previous cutting edge healthcare companies.

The team chose to launch in New Orleans due to the sizzling entrepreneur scene, and they strongly believe they can positively affect the most people here through their community-based health approach. They also have their eye on growth over the coming years, and there is plenty of room to grow with a market that is estimated at $8.7 billion by Rand Corp.

Next week, the GetHealthy team will head to San Francisco to the Rock Health conference, where they will start the public launch of their product. We’re looking forward to hearing more about this! For more information, check out GetHealthy at GetHealthy.com