Home » Six early-stage health-related companies selected for XLerate Health business accelerator

Six early-stage health-related companies selected for XLerate Health business accelerator

10-week intensive program began this week

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Aug. 14, 2013) – XLerate Health, a Louisville-based accelerator for early-stage, health-related companies, has selected six companies to participate in its inaugural class. The accelerator’s 10-week intensive immersion program began Monday and runs until “Demo Day” on Oct. 25.

XLerateHealth-300x53Selected companies include:

Medical Search Technologies, Chicago: Medical Search Technologies Inc. offers a cloud based text-mining platform for life sciences research and marketing and patient outcomes research. The platform is designed to extract quantitative and qualitative information from leading published biomedical journals, EMRs, FDA drug labels and patient forums. It is used for drug discovery and repurposing, mapping of genes and receptors, drug comparison studies, biopsy and pathology analysis, discovering which treatment modalities are most effective, and any other application that requires analyzing unstructured text. The company is led by an experienced, multidisciplinary team of entrepreneurs, physicians, and software developers.

CredentialedCARE, San Diego: Protocols for performing background checks on direct care workers are overly fragmented. The Affordable Care Act mandates that all states create new, updated systems for performing these checks on workers who have direct contact with long-term care clients. CredentialedCARE is creating a one-stop solution that integrates all state programs into one cloud-based site that helps providers lower the cost of staff recruitment and increase efficiencies while offering unique marketing strategies that improve transparency for consumers.

MedSparq, Elizabethtown: Medsparq is a cloud-based appointment scheduling system for health care providers. Its mission is to empower providers and patients to select and instantly schedule appointments with other healthcare providers in order to increase access to providers, reduce staff work and improve patient care transitions.

LockUpLead, Louisville, Ky.: LockUpLead neutralizes the CDC’s No. 1 environmental neurotoxin in homes, schools and urban soil — poisonous lead. The permanent brain damage to young children that leads to learning and behavior disorders can be avoided with this EPA-tested technology that converts toxic lead on contact to a molecular form that can’t be absorbed by the body or leach into the environment.

Liberate Medical, Louisville, Ky.: Liberate Medical is developing an abdominal electrical muscle stimulator, which synchronizes with a patient’s breathing activity, as a platform technology to treat patients with respiratory disease. They are initially focused on reducing air trapping in COPD patients and reducing hospital days for patients on mechanical ventilation.

11 Picas, New York City: 11 Picas empowers pro bloggers and their followers with end-to-end content applications and participatory interest networks. 11 Picas mission is to become the first choice bloghost for independent journalists. This fall, in partnership with Inventiv Health and HealthiNation, 11 Picas will build companion vertical networks in health: Lifista (living well), Flavorpages (eating well) and Good Medicine (conditions and therapies). The social newsrooms grow through collective administration and promotion. By aggregating a lot of small followings (projections scale down from authors with average followings of 2,000), 11 Picas create big audience, network effects and better compensation for quality independent bloggers.

“We were delighted with the quality of the applicant pool for this first cohort and are excited to get started,” said Bob Saunders, XLerate Health’s chairman and co-founder. “Out of a large pool of applicants, we have identified an outstanding first group of early-stage companies with technologies that are solving real problems within the healthcare delivery and wellness continuum. Our objective is to help them build their commercial footprint, and accelerate their speed to market.”

In addition to Saunders, a seasoned venture capitalist who has worked with more than 100 startup companies over the past two decades and has mentored several healthcare startup enterprises, fellow XLerate Health co-founders include Ted Smith, a successful healthcare entrepreneur, former Senior Advisor for Innovation in the Office of the National Coordinator in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington D.C., and who now serves as the Director of Economic Growth & Innovation for Louisville Metro Government; and Bobby Ferreri, former executive director of Greater Louisville’s Inc.’s EnterpriseCorp and currently the ‎managing partner and founder at Ferreri Partners, PLLC.

Other leadership includes XLerate Health’s COO Jackie Willmot, who has over three decades in the healthcare innovation and startup space, and spent more than 15 years as an executive with Humana, and directors – Joanna CruzJay Garmon, and Zack Pennington – who offer a diverse set of backgrounds ranging from venture capital to healthcare entrepreneurship, to healthcare ecosystem participants (payers, providers etc.).

Supporting XLerate Health are mentors who will provide guidance and counsel to XLerate Health’s portfolio companies, drawing from their depth of experience in healthcare and business creation. Mentorship can range from providing a single phone call for advice to a much more intensive interaction depending on the needs of the company and the time commitment of the individual mentor. Startup companies will typically have two to five mentors with whom they engage on various aspects of their business. Mentors in the accelerator have extensive experience in various aspects of the healthcare ecosystem and/or various aspects of early stage new venture creation.

XLerate Health receives sponsorship support from the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development – Office of Commercialization & Innovation, Kentucky Science and Technology Corp., Louisville Metro Government, Louisville Downtown Development Corp., Greater Louisville Inc.’s EnterpriseCorp, and ID&A Office and Interior Design. Supporting venture capital sponsors include Triathlon Ventures (Cincinnati), TriStar Ventures (Nashville), OCA Ventures (Chicago) and Chrysalis Ventures (Louisville).  XLerate Health’s healthcare partners include the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, a partnership between the University of Louisville and Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s Healthcare; Johns Hopkins Health for America; Innovate LTC; The National Space Biomedical Research Institute; The Nucleus Innovation Center; and ZirMed.

For more information, visit www.XLerateHealth.com.