A new venture firm focused on digital health startups launched on Monday.
Create Health Ventures — which is based in Austin and Chicago — announced the close of its inaugural $21 million fund. The firm invests in early stage startups that make technology for payers and pharmaceutical companies.
The firm comprises two founding managing partners, Amit Aysola and Emma Cartmell, both of whom have been active in the healthcare space for decades. Aysola has served as an advisor to the Michigan Biomedical Venture Fund and the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at Northwestern University, and Cartmell has advised UnitedHealthcare and the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School.
“We have both been in healthcare our entire careers and we understand the unique challenges and complexity facing all stakeholders in the industry,” Aysola said. “It is an industry with meaningful infrastructural and regulatory challenges, and one that is resistant to change — therefore, innovation occurs slowly and in incremental fashion.”
Because of this experience, he and Cartmell have decided to only invest in founders who come from the healthcare world. Create is looking to back healthcare veterans because they understand the dynamics of the sector and have a better feel for how to build consensus among healthcare stakeholders, Aysola explained.
The firm has made five investments to date. Create is backing caregiver engagement company Carallel, patient care collaboration platform Watershed Health, patient screening startup Advocatia, Medicaid care coordination firm Pair Team, and clinical trial reimbursement software company Nmible.
“All of these companies aligned perfectly with our fund’s thesis because they focus on access to care and an improved patient experience, including for the underserved population. These companies stood out because their founders/CEOs are healthcare ‘insiders’ who are building best-in-market solutions that will make a real-world impact on health outcomes,” Aysola declared.
He noted that the majority of Create’s portfolio companies are currently startups that sell into payers.
The firm’s first fund is focused on payers because they are “the lynchpin” for the types of change that he and Cartmell want to see in the industry, such as better care access for underserved populations and improved population health outcomes, Aysola said.
“One of the biggest challenges facing the industry is the lack of data integration across a patient’s care journey, and given that much of an individual’s data is aggregated at the payer level, we are hoping that our portfolio companies can enable seamless sharing of data across the ecosystem. We are also prioritizing investments in platforms that align incentives between payers and providers in such a way as to benefit the patient,” he stated.
As of now, Nmible is the only company in Create’s portfolio that is in the pharma space, but Aysol said the fund will make more investments in this area in the coming years.
He pointed out that the pharma industry is ramping up late-stage clinical trials and manufacturing, noting that the number of drugs in Phase III clinical trials has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
“Currently, the pharmaceutical industry has a multitude of point solutions for patient recruitment, screening and enrollment, as well as participant management during a trial. Echoing the challenges facing the payer landscape, there is a lack of data connectivity and cohesion across this entire workflow,” Aysola remarked,
In his view, the industry needs platforms that can serve as an end-to-end product for the clinical trials process. He said this type of product may arrive soon, as he is currently seeing technologies emerge that can solve significant portions of this challenging process.
Photo: Abscent84, Getty Images
