Project testing and funding are necessary steps in the launch of the start-up. Crowd-funding is the new kid on the block and is making a lot of waves in the start-up world. And thanks to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), which goes into effect in 2013, crowdfunding will transition from a donation to a true investment model.
Project testing and funding are necessary steps in the launch of the start-up. Crowd-funding is the new kid on the block and is making a lot of waves in the start-up world. And thanks to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), which goes into effect in 2013, crowdfunding will transition from a donation to a true investment model.
Project testing is especially important for healthcare start-ups. Getting a product or idea into the hands of healthcare professionals, patients and wellness experts is crucial to study feasibility and ease of use.
I don’t know much at all about crowd-funding or project testing, so I asked my friend and colleague, Dr Patricia Salber, if I could record her thoughts. Dr Salber is a board certified internist and emergency room physician, the creator and editor of the blog, The Doctor Weighs In, a principal at Zia Healthcare Consultants and also Founder and CEO of HealthTechHatch, a resource dedicated to launching early-stage innovations in healthcare and putting them into the hands of healthcare professionals, patients and consumers.
HealthTechHatch just recently joined forces with one of the biggest crowdfunding platforms on the web, Indiegogo. With Indiegogo as a partner, Health Tech Hatch can give companies an opportunity to reach a wider community of interested funders, and can focus on helping startups to get usability feedback on ideas and prototypes from patients and doctors, a process it calls “codesign.” Gigacom covers the partnership with Indiegog and gives a good idea of HealthTechHatch’s mission in a recent article
HealthTechHatch is also part of the Blue Button Patient CoDesign Challenge. Patients are invited to go to www.ideas.healthtechhatch.com and post their ideas for how they want to see their data used to create tools that they can use themselves or with their doctors. Some of the ideas already posted include:
- Please help my wife manage our children’s immunizations.
- A tool that simplifies the management of chronic multiple conditions.
- Make my prescription management stink less.
You can read more about this challenge in a recent post here.
Now listen and watch as Dr Patricia Salber talks about her experience with start-ups.