StartUp Health

11/05/2026

🏅 Two StartUp Health community members are among the winners of the 2026 MedTech Breakthrough Awards -- one of the most competitive recognition programs in health technology, drawing more than 5,000 nominations from organizations across 20+ countries this year.

Cala Health, Inc., has been named Best New Technology Solution -- Neurology for the Cala kIQ® System, the only FDA-cleared wearable device that delivers effective therapy for action hand tremor in people with essential tremor and Parkinson's disease. For the more than 7 million Americans living with essential tremor, non-invasive, at-home treatment options have historically been limited -- the Cala kIQ system is changing that, empowering patients to manage symptoms and reclaim independence without invasive intervention.

Pear Suite has been selected for the Care Delivery Innovation Award in recognition of its work expanding access to community health workers (CHWs) -- a frontline workforce that builds trust, addresses social determinants of health, and closes care gaps for Medicaid members and other underserved populations. Pear Suite's AI-powered platform connects CHWs and community-based organizations with health plans, giving these essential workers the infrastructure they need to deliver and sustain high-quality care.

Congratulations to both teams on this well-deserved recognition. 👏

🔗 medtechbreakthrough.com/2026-winners/

11/05/2026

Patient billing is one of the most friction-filled experiences in healthcare -- and StartUp Health community member Blake Walker, CEO & Co-founder of Inbox Health, has spent over a decade fixing it from the ground up. 💳🏥

In a new Q&A with Healthcare Brew, Walker traces the origin of Inbox Health back to a simple, frustrating moment: getting his first medical bill after college, a paper statement asking him to handwrite his credit card number. "Wow, this is nuts," he remembers thinking. That instinct -- to look at billing from the patient's perspective -- became the foundation for everything that followed.

Today, Inbox Health serves about 4,000 practices across every specialty and every state, helping providers and patients have clearer, faster conversations about what's owed and why. The platform has shifted the billing experience from a 60- to 70-day paper-and-phone ordeal into a transparent, two-way communication process -- increasingly powered by AI agents that help patients understand their bills, ask questions, and set up payment plans in real time.

Looking ahead, Walker says the focus is moving even earlier in the care journey: giving patients clarity on expected costs before the visit happens, not after.

"That's become the bigger focus for us now as we look forward and help providers and patients really try to get more clarity before the visit actually happens."

Worth a read.
➡️ https://www.healthcare-brew.com/stories/inbox-health-ceo-blake-walker-simplifying-patient-billing

11/05/2026

Building a company that reaches over a billion people without spending a dollar on paid advertising -- that's the story StartUp Health community member Victor Penev, CEO & Founder of Edamam, shares in an interview with Digital Web Solutions. 🎙️

Victor walks through how Edamam evolved from a consumer app into the B2B data infrastructure powering food and nutrition experiences at The New York Times, Amazon, Microsoft, and beyond -- and how partnerships, proprietary data, and founder-led content drove organic growth at a scale most companies never reach.

The conversation ranges from the nuts and bolts of inbound growth strategy to the bigger picture: why Victor believes food is the ultimate medicine, how prevention will reshape healthcare economics, and why impact can be a more powerful north star than revenue.

"Food data will power future personalization" -- and Edamam has spent over a decade building the foundation to make that possible.

A worthwhile watch for founders, builders, and anyone thinking about where food, data, and health are headed.

➡️ https://www.digitalwebsolutions.com/interview/victor-penev/

11/05/2026

The question isn't whether to use AI. It's whether you're using it more cleverly than everyone else. 🤖

a16z General Partner Julie Yoo on what separates the founders who turn new tools into competitive advantages from those who treat them as table stakes.

Check out the highlights from this fireside chat
▶️ https://media.startuphealth.com/p/what-the-age-of-superintelligence-means-for-health-tech-a-conversation-with-julie-yoo-of-a16z

Join the StartUp Health community ask your own questions during fireside chats
▶️ https://www.startuphealth.com/

09/05/2026

📊 100% success.

Clinical trials of the NEXT Life Sciences delivery device showed 100% placement accuracy across physicians from new doctors to veteran urologists.

Now the team is advancing trials of Vasalgel as they prepare for pivotal studies and FDA submission.

Watch the full conversation ⤵️
https://youtu.be/OzXL7nZx8pY

08/05/2026

Sometimes the most powerful health tool is a little friction. 🧠📵

StartUp Health community member Unpluq is getting noticed for exactly that. Unpluq was recently featured among five tech gadgets designed to help people stop doomscrolling — spotlighting how the app uses deliberate barriers to interrupt mindless phone use before it starts.

Rather than relying on willpower alone, Unpluq lets users block distracting apps and choose how to unlock them: by tapping a physical NFC tag, shaking the phone, or scanning a QR code. Scheduled blocking, category-based limits, and emergency focus modes round out the toolkit. The result is a nudge-based approach rooted in behavioral design — making it just inconvenient enough to scroll that users pause and reconsider.

It's a small intervention with meaningful implications for mental health, focus, and digital wellbeing at scale.

➡️ https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/5-tech-gadgets-to-stop-doomscrolling-10672279/

08/05/2026

🤝 StartUp Health community member HealthBook+ is teaming up with Direct Fitness Collab (DFC) to close one of the most persistent gaps in preventive care: the distance between a clinical visit and what patients actually do every day.

The partnership integrates DFC's personalized fitness and nutrition coaching -- founded by a Direct Primary Care physician and an exercise physiologist -- with HealthBook+'s clinical intelligence platform and its Agentic Medical Partner, PaiGE. The result is a unified health management experience where medical records, wearable data, nutrition logs, and coaching notes all live in one place, and where AI-driven insights keep patients supported between appointments, not just during them.

For primary care physicians, it means real-time visibility into how their patients are living. For patients, it means expert guidance that's continuous, personalized, and grounded in their actual health data.

"By combining real-time health data with personalized coaching and agentic AI, we're helping individuals better understand what's happening in their health and take meaningful action every day, not just during clinical visits," said Christopher Turner, CEO & Co-founder of HealthBook+.

With chronic disease prevention at the center of both companies' missions, this collaboration is exactly the kind of integrated approach the healthcare system needs more of.

➡️ https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/909990075/direct-fitness-collab-announces-strategic-partnership-with-healthbook-to-revolutionize-virtual-wellness

08/05/2026

What if Alzheimer's disease has been defined too narrowly — and treating it requires a fundamentally different framework? That's the question at the heart of a major new feature on StartUp Health community member Sinaptica Therapeutics in the latest edition of LSI's The Lens magazine. 🧠

The article lays out a compelling case: as Alzheimer's is increasingly understood as a disease of network dysfunction — not just amyloid plaques and tau tangles — precision neuromodulation is emerging as a serious therapeutic contender.

Sinaptica's platform pairs transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with EEG-based brain mapping, machine learning, and neuronavigation to deliver personalized therapy targeting the brain's Default Mode Network, the system responsible for memory and identity. Every patient is individually calibrated. Therapy adapts in real time based on how the brain responds.

"We are essentially creating an EKG of the brain," said CEO Ken Mariash. "We can measure how signals propagate through the network and determine whether the system is stable or degrading over time."

The team also sees neuromodulation not as a replacement for drug therapy, but as a foundation other treatments can build on. "One plus one might equal five, not even two, three, or four," said Scientific Co-founder Emiliano Santarnecchi, PhD, on the potential of combining precision stimulation with existing therapies.

With Phase 2 data in hand, an FDA Breakthrough Device Designation, a recently closed oversubscribed $9 million financing round, and pivotal trial enrollment targeted for late 2026 — the momentum is real.

Read the full feature, free, in The Lens.
➡️ https://issuu.com/lsi-magazine/docs/sinaptica_spotlight_article_the_lens_-_vol_3_ed_4

08/05/2026

What if logging your meals was as simple as having a conversation? StartUp Health community member Victor Penev, CEO & Founder of Edamam, is making that a reality for developers and health apps everywhere. 🥗🤖

Edamam has launched a hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets developers and companies build AI-powered food logging solutions with minimal engineering lift. By connecting to Edamam's Food Database API — covering over 1 million foods and meals, analyzed for nutrients, allergens, and dietary tags — developers can now plug directly into a large language model and enable users to log meals through natural conversation, photos, voice, or barcode scanning. No more scrolling through drop-down lists.

The practical applications are significant: weight management tools, chronic condition tracking, wearable and CGM integrations, and more. Edamam is already using the MCP server internally to build white-label AI agent solutions for clients who want the capability without the development work.

"By making it very easy to build food logging solutions, we are providing an easy module to be integrated in any food tracking application for managing weight, health conditions, pairing with wearable or CGM data," Penev said.

The roadmap extends further — recipe search, personalized meal planning, and eventually a full virtual nutritionist suite are all on the horizon.

➡️ https://www.prlog.org/13142621-edamam-releases-hosted-mcp-server-for-food-logging-applications-built-with-large-language-models-and-ai-agents.html

07/05/2026

The mission of Cx Precision Medicine is deceptively simple: use AI and blood to give primary care physicians a tool they have never had.

Not a tool to diagnose Alzheimer's. Not a tool to detect amyloid pathology. A tool to triage — to answer the question every primary care physician faces when a worried patient sits across from them: does this person need a specialist, or can we figure this out right here?

That is the front door to dementia care that StartUp Health community member Danguole Altman is building. And it starts with a blood draw.

🎥 Watch the full conversation: https://media.startuphealth.com/p/why-alzheimer-s-diagnosis-takes-3-5-years-and-how-a-simple-blood-test-could-change-that

07/05/2026

Two years after a $400 million take-private deal, StartUp Health community member Access TeleCare is posting its strongest results yet — and redefining what kind of company it is. 📈

The Dallas-based acute care telemedicine provider grew top-line revenue 60 percent in 2025, recording its two highest year-over-year growth quarters since going private. But the numbers tell only part of the story. The bigger shift is philosophical: Access TeleCare is stepping away from the healthcare IT label and repositioning as a clinical services company that happens to be powered by technology.

"We're not healthcare IT; we're not a SaaS company. We are clinical services that are tech-enabled," said Dr. Chris Gallagher, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer.

That clarity is translating into outcomes. In 2025, Access posted its highest clinical quality scores in company history — the same year it hit peak growth. The company now reaches more than 216 million people across the U.S., with 84 percent of patients coming from medically underserved populations. It has added more than 400 physicians and nurse practitioners since the take-private, and is preparing to launch its ninth clinical service line — gastrointestinal care — this summer.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that the highest quality and best growth happened together," Gallagher said. "When people received quality care, they recognized it and go back. It becomes a trusted partner."

Worth a read in D Magazine.
➡️ https://www.dmagazine.com/healthcare-business/2026/05/access-telecare-400-million-repositioning/

The Dallas company is shedding its tech label and leaning into clinical care—fueling 60 percent revenue growth in 2025.