Here are our 10 Launch! participants:

Cobalt Therapeutics has a portfolio of online cognitive behavioral health programs.

HealthSouk is an online marketplace and bazaar, of sorts, for health care services.

Kinergy Health is a private health care network for patients and caregivers to manage their communication with health care team members and facilities.

RealMealz is web and mobile application focused on teaching new and occasional cooks the skills, recipes and telling them what ingredients they need to make healthy and delicious meals.

BetterDoctor is a new doctor search tool that helps users find the best doctor for their needs in their area.

function Medicine is a wellness program based on easy to use, but complex weekly baseline health assessments.

Novi Medicine is an online dermatology service with diagnosis and treatment for skin conditions.

Thryve is an online and mobile food tracker and coach.

eTherpi is a comprehensive online behavioral health portal, video chat service, and practice management solution for therapists.

OnPulse is a secure, online platform for healthcare providers and patients to share information with each other and patients.

Editor’s Note: This post first ran May 1. After each company launched this afternoon at Health 2.0 Matchpoint Boston, audience members voted on their favorite startup. Thryve came in first place with about 20% of the votes. Congratulations!

Ann Mond Johnson will join us on stage at the Health 2.0 Spring Fling: Matchpoint Boston on the Health 2.0 2.0 panel where she will discuss he journey and endeavors into multiple companies in the Health 2.0 space, and the lessons learned along the way. This interview is part of Spring Fling: Matchpoint Boston series.

Indu Subaiya: It goes without saying that your background in consumer facing health has been interesting and you have seen a lot of innovation and services for consumers. First with, and even before, founding Subimo and then going to the acquisition WebMd, and now chairing the Board at ConnectedHealth. Tell us a little bit about your journey starting with Subimo. What were you trying to change at the time? Do you think you achieve that?

Ann: Sure, and thank you first of all for giving me the opportunity. It’s always fun to talk about our story because I think in retrospect it’s more powerful than when you’re in the moment, if that makes sense. When you’re in the middle of it, it’s hard to tell that you’re making a difference or you’re making progress and stepping back it’s fun to look back on our success and to see what we did and what we didn’t to and how we did it.

I would say the first thing to remember is that our focus at Subimo was to help consumers make better decisions about their health for themselves and their family. It was interesting because when we started the company in 2000, there wasn’t a whole lot of discussion about things like hospital acquired infection rates, comparative outcomes, variation and outcomes and so forth. But in our previous lives we had work with all this clinical data,  so our focus was to take very complex, involved data sets and make them more accessible for the consumer.

The Health 2.0 Boston event is focused on partnering, so I think it’s worth pointing out that part of our growth at Subimo was that as we made clinical information about hospitals and physicians available to consumers through their health plan and employers. We allowed individual hospitals in each market free access to our data so that they could review and comment as necessary.

This was a transparency that was really unique at that time and was especially welcome because there was a whole lot of discussion emerging in 2000 and 2001 about transparency at a national level, particularly the groups like Leapfrog. By allowing hospitals to have access to this information and engaging them in a dialog, they helped evangelize  the data rather than fight us. We found that although we are providing our tools and information to the payers in the market, we are also ultimately facilitating discussions between payers and providers about the outcome variation and quality. At Subimo, we thought that the consumer won because they had access to much better information.

In terms of whether we accomplished what we set out to do, which was to help people make better decisions, I think that we can all agree that consumers are much more aware of variations and outcomes today than they were 12 years ago. So, I would say that while we all have a long way to go as a society, improving health systems and improving how we pay for services, how we incent providers for services, I would say that Subimo contributed significantly to that offer.

Indu Subaiya: I would completely agree because I think reading about Subimo, it was almost synonymous with the consumer directed healthcare movement and that was the example people pointed to. In some ways, you were I think ahead of your time because now, look at the Health Data initiative that Todd Park is evangelizing, Castlight Health and groups like it, and this was 12 years before.

One of the themes at Boston is going to be partnerships and mergers, and what it’s like for an entrepreneur to go through different life-cycles in a company. What was it like being acquired by WebMD, and how did your role change in that transition?

Ann: We were acquired by WebMD in 2006 and that came about because we saw an opportunity to do much more in healthcare decision support and felt that WebMD provided the best option for continuing the growth of the products that we had initially created. We not only had products that were focused on comparative quality, but also products to help people assess what might be their best insurance options and cost quality trade offs, even on the outpatients setting.

The acquisition was completed at the end of 2006, and at that point I transitioned into a product strategy role within the Health Services division. That is the division within WebMD that provided services to health plan and to large employers. Initially, a majority of our focus was taking the best-of-breed products and figuring out the best and most effective approach to deliver them to health plans and large employers.  I would say that I learned a lot during that experience. I left at the end of 2008 and I feel lucky that I’m able to call many of my former colleagues my friends today.

Indu Subaiya: How big was Subimo at the time that was acquired in terms of employees? Was it a big shift in terms of the size of the company?

Ann: Yeah, it was a big shift. We were a much smaller organization in terms of full-time employees and WebMD, of course, has this phenomenal brand. If you think about trusted brands in health, clearly the public portal WebMD was the most trusted brand in healthcare.

Indu Subaiya: So, you were in that role for two years; can you connect the dots for me from that point to being involved with ConnectedHealth?

Ann: Connected Health was started by two of my colleagues who had been with me at Subimo, Joe Donlan and John Fiacco were both co-founders of Subimo along with myself and Tracy Heilman. They had a vision about continuing to help consumers make better decisions. The industry that they went after was health insurance. So there are a lot of similar themes between what we did at Subimo and what we’re focusing on the ConnectedHealth. John and Joe, to their credit, really started from ground zero getting their licenses as health insurance brokers, and really understanding that health insurance and benefits continue to be confusing for people all over the U.S., including myself, even though, I’m very ingrained in it.

What the team at ConnectedHealth does now is to put insurance in context. It’s not just about health insurance, we are focused on the broader goal. We’re looking at health insurance, life insurance, disability, critical care. Health insurance is one part of helping people protect themselves.

The other thing that we found with insurance, which is not too dissimilar for making decisions about your provider or hospital, is that we believe the market of insurance and making decisions about it is only going to get harder as the market shifts to a retail focus. What we’ve learned in studying consumer behavior and decision making is that too many choices can make making a decision difficult, especially when it’s hard to compare options. If you add to that our inability to accurately assess risks, either for cancer or the risk of our house burning down, we have a hard time really estimating the likelihood of things happening. We can either overestimate it or underestimate it. It turns out that we’re not very good at making complex decisions, so that’s really the focus of ConnectedHealth now, helping people navigate that system and make better decisions for themselves and their family.

Indu Subaiya: How do you think the world will change for consumers with these health insurance exchanges that we are anticipating? It certainly seems like a need for ConnectedHealth will be even greater as we look at the horizon.

Ann: We certainly believe the need is going to become greater and we have certainly seen this. Not just with the health insurance exchanges but with the fact that employers are talking more and more about shifting from a defined benefit to defined contribution, and creating an environment where the consumer has a pocket of money to deal with and is making decisions that best reflect the needs of their family and themselves at that point in time.

Indu Subaiya: Right, and that’s been a spectrum that’s been moving in that direction for a while now.

Ann: Correct. I think that regardless of what happens with the Supreme Court, the reality from our perspective is the retail focus and making things more understandable for consumers is going to expand.

Indu Subaiya: I think we share your point of view on that. One point that’s sort of related to the work of ConnectedHealth is the transition we’ve seen as health insurance plans position themselves in a changing market. I believe it was Mark Bertolini of Aetna who said famously at Health 2.0 that we are no longer a health plan, we are a technology services company with an insurance vehicle attached to. Earlier you spoke about WebMD having a trusted consumer brand, do you think health plans can become trusted brands for consumer audiences as we evolve in this landscape?

Ann: I had a lot of optimism about this. If someone or some organization helps you manage your health, then they should be a trusted brand. However, as you know, it’s clear that many plans and insurance carriers have some work to do in terms of trust. At the same time, we’ve seen some recent efforts such as Aetna repositioning themselves or CIGNA repositioning themselves with their Go You campaign. Even with Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Florida changing their name to Florida Blue. From our vantage point if an insurance company is interested in a long-term relationship with the member and is not expecting to lose them during open enrollment, then a plan must become a trusted brand.

Indu Subaiya: Absolutely. We are seeing some interesting acquisitions where plans are merging with or acquiring smaller innovative startups, and if there are going to be those distribution platforms for consumers, there certainly has to be a repositioning there.

Ann: No question.

Indu Subaiya: Last but not least, as you know we have a lot of entrepreneurs working very hard in the trenches. Since you have led companies at many different stages, what are some of your favorite lessons learned as a leader in the healthcare technology space that you’d want to share?

Ann: The three lessons that I would share is that with experience there comes fewer surprises, what to expect, how to respond and where to find the best resources for the company. Even where to be searching for best resources for the company. That can be technology, it can be people, it can be any number of different things.

Another lesson is the importance of staying focused. All too often it’s tempting to go off in different directions that look sexy or enticing but are not core to either your expertise, your focus or what the market really needs. The lesson of being focused is important.

Finally, the third lesson, which is one that I’ve learned from the very first company I was with, is that people always want to be part of a winning team. There’s a lot of fun and excitement and a ton of energy in working with smart and focused people, and I would have to say that our group has been really lucky in that respect all along.

Indu Subaiya: Those are great words of advice and ones that I am listening to eagerly as I think about how Health 2.0 is growing as a company. Your point about focus is interesting because sometimes you may have an initial bit of success, but then how do you choose and direct the ship?

Ann: Exactly. I’ve read some studies and articles about entrepreneurs going through multiple companies and some have a high risk of not being as successful in their second as they were in their first. Part of the reason for that is that with their first they had an area of expertise that they focused on, and then with the second endeavor they thought that they could be just as successful in anything else.

Indu Subaiya: Absolutely! We wish you luck with the new company and I’m looking forward to seeing you in Boston in a few weeks.

Ann: We look forward to seeing you as well. Thank you!

Thomas Vanderheyden, Vice President of the Emerging Business Group at UnitedHealth Group, will join us on stage May 15th at the Health 2.0 Spring Fling: Matchpoint Boston on the Customers Panel. He will discuss UnitedHealth Group’s partnerships, collaborations and other business development strategies. This interview is part of Spring Fling: Matchpoint Boston series.

Indu Subaiya: Thanks for joining us today. Why don’t we start off by you telling us a bit about your role at UnitedHealth Group? We understand that you’re responsible for creating partnerships and other opportunities. So, tell us a bit more about the role.

Thomas: Sure! The group is Emerging Businesses Group. It’s a corporate function, so we spread across all areas of UnitedHealth Group whether that’s on the benefits side or on the health care services side. Our mission is really to create, identify, foster, develop new businesses for us to participate in. So that means most days I spend learning and meeting with generally earlier stage companies.

You’ve probably seen in the press, our participation in the Rock Health incubator and some other related activities, so we got to learn, learn, and learn, and then figure out how those companies and ideas can help us achieve our goals.

Indu Subaiya: It sounds that it’s still in that information gathering stage, but are there some models for how you might partner with some of these startups, and more innovative companies?

Thomas: Yeah. At CES this year, we announced a couple of partnerships which I think are indicative of both our method and our interest. Lose It! is one of them. I think probably a lot of people are familiar, or will be, with the Lose It! app that’s been around for a few years. It’s usually at the top of the health and wellness queue of the App Store. That’s a very interesting example for us as a company in that it was a very early stage, pre-revenue company, but they had demonstrated traction in the market space, millions of downloads.

They had good data, persistency in terms of users, and also the outcomes that the users were having. Lose It! is both an activity and a calorie tracker, leading generally to weight loss. So, the fact that they had really good data about their members, drew our interest, and then lastly which is often what we look at first was the leadership team. The two co-founders of Lose It! had great track record. Lose It! is at least their third startup, and the other two ended very, very successfully for them.

That combination got us interested, and as we announced at CES, we are partnering with them. So the market will soon see some products and services that are coming out under our brand, if you will, carrying the Lose It! functionality and probably the Lose brand. So, that’s one.

CareSpeak is an interesting example; again, early stage pre-revenue company. In this case, it’s a two-way texting platform for medication adherence. This isn’t you or I taking our antibiotics after having some reason to take antibiotics, the Mount Sinai trial that was done in 2009 with this was related to pediatric liver transplant. So these are complex medical conditions where drug adherence is very, very important in the recovery and constituent, of the patient.

Again, it’s early stage but proven, even though it was pre-revenue, the trial proved great results. This is just another example of us looking early stage yet, it’s something that’s been proven has good leadership and something that we could bring to market and help the health outcomes of our members.

Indu Subaiya: So, in both cases was the model for partnership the same or exactly what was the way that you would partner? Would you roll it out to your consumer members? Would you make it available? What was the exact way of working together?

Thomas: I think the models in those two cases are probably similar. So, we’re looking at their technologies and then how we embed those technologies within our products and services. It;s not the case where we’re just offering Lose It! on our portals and telling our members, “you can have the Lose It! app if you want.” We’re probably going to embed it a little more deeply into our programs. A substantial portion of our customers are employers who are looking for better health outcomes for their employees and cost reductions as well. As we create more comprehensive programs around, say weight loss in this case, it’s probably likely you’ll see Lose It! as a component in a broader offering to the market. It’s probably less likely we would take a point solution available on the market even from an early or a late stage company and just turn around and resell it. We’re generally going to add value and embed that into a broader offering.

Indu Subaiya: Sure! Because those applications or tools are pretty available to consumers as it is through platforms like the App Store to begin.

Thomas: Exactly, exactly.

Indu Subaiya:  Matthew and I have been doing this since late 2006, early 2007, and we certainly see hundreds of companies every year applying to Health 2.0. I’m curious, in your tenure at UnitedHealth Group, are you seeing the type of companies you work with changing or evolving as the tech landscape changes, and if so, how?

Thomas: Yeah. I think, so I’ve been involved in mergers and acquisitions twice during my nine years here at UnitedHealth Group. I think our interest and it maybe as a result of the chair that I’m sitting in now for the last two years. But, we’re certainly looking more I think at the earlier stage activities within the innovation side of the industry than I’ve seen or participated in before. Again, I’m one of a hundred thousand employees, so my lens maybe rose-colored, if you will, from the perspective of early stage. But, I sense more interest and energy in that early innovation side of the industry. So that, to me, being in the role that we’re in is pretty exciting. It’s lots of energy and excitement, and being a part of that is pretty cool.

Indu Subaiya: It makes for a fun day job, right? But at the same time your vetting skills have to be superhuman. So I guess another questions is what do you look for in terms of a candidate that at least passes the first couple of gates, if you will, to be considered to be a partner with UnitedHealth Group?

Thomas: These may not be categorical but they’re probably close to categorical. It has to improve health outcomes and it likely have to reduce cost within the health care system broadly. So, the new widget which is going to provide me great information, and add cost to the system is probably not going to be the winner.

Indu Subaiya: That makes all the sense in the world, and yet I think there’s some connective tissue that’s probably missing there, because on the one hand, you have an early stage company who is out there trying to just make sure the product works and may get some preliminary market validation, and then you have an enterprise-level entity, such as UnitedHealth Group, and your requirements for something that works, that scale, that is real, and has real legs is on a whole different level. How does a small company demonstrate that they have outcomes and can reduce cost, do we need to be helping them do that more?

Thomas: Well, in the case of both Lose It! and CareSpeak, while they are both pre-revenue with small number of employees, they both proved it.  I don’t think it is as difficult as it sounds, but certainly you’re right. We do have within our lens things like scalability, and of course privacy and security is very, very high in the list. So those are things we’re concerned with.

Like you, I have the fortune to see hundreds of companies, and if someone has got a really good idea, and it looks like it’s going to reduce cost, and improve outcomes, if they could get just a small start with any kind of proof whatsoever, we’re probably going to be interested in learning more.

Indu Subaiya: It’s really exciting. Like I said we wouldn’t, I don’t think, have imagined having conversations with UnitedHealth Group 5-7 years ago to be talking about early stage companies this way.

One thing that’s kind of funny is that we use to describe the two competing platforms in health IT, at least for this ecosystem, as being Google and Microsoft. Would you be building to the Google platform or Microsoft? Of course now that’s changed, and we’re seeing folks like you, GE, AT&T, Verizon, Aetna, even some of the EMR groups like Allscripts, opening up their platforms and saying, “we want application developers to come build new apps to these platforms, and come work with us.” So, are we about to enter the platform for 2012 or will all of these systems be able to coexist in harmony?

Thomas: We announced at HIMSS this year an impending release of our Health Care Cloud and related SDK. So the only way this system is going to do what it needs to do and I mean the health care system more broadly is to reduce cost very, very broadly and improve outcomes very, very broadly. The only way that’s going to happen is to connect, and your connective tissue comment is dead on.

We see ourselves as a very central player in that connective tissue, which relates to what we announced at HIMSS about the cloud. And then, the fun work that I get to do and our team gets to do is to look at all of the point solutions, such as Lose It!, CareSpeak and others. How do we embed them more systemically and add pieces of data that are really going to enhance to value realized by our members. So that’s how we’re envisioning the marketplace and that’s how we’re behaving and participating.

Indu Subaiya: Great! We noticed that in your background you’ve done work globally with UnitedHealth Group as well. We just had our conference in India which was really exciting and I just wondered if you had some thoughts to share with entrepreneurs in health IT about how their perspective should be shape by global opportunities?

Thomas: I had the fortune of living in India and really getting to know the health care system there. And the fun thing about India is that its health care system is changing at least as quickly, if not more quickly, as the US health care system.

I think the opportunity for innovation whether it’s India or China or some markets in the Middle East is at least as great as it is here in the US. And in many cases, there are fewer restrictions to be innovative. The privacy and security policies we have here are a little bit more restrictive than they have been in the past in some of those places, and so earlier stage companies I think have distinct advantage of moving quickly and trying some things in those markets.

A challenge within those markets however, is the price point. So, as you create a service in the U.S. that you could sell for a dollar, that service in India is likely going to have to be sold for a fraction of a dollar. So that’s going to push the U.S.-based entrepreneur or other entrepreneurs to figure out cost models, scalability models that they haven’t yet been pushed to consider.

Indu Subaiya: I think the other interesting direction of movement might be entrepreneurs from those regions selling it to the US. We had our first developer Code-a-thon where people were building apps in India that might have global impact as well.

Thomas: Yeah. I attended HIMSS about a year ago and, there were a number of firms from outside the U.S. who were presenting their services there and solutions at the conference, and it was extremely impressive. And some of them are already of scale, and they could step right in, and in fact some of them have stepped into the US. So it’s absolutely an opportunity for those creative people. In fact, they may have a leg up if they’ve developed a product or service at a cost structure and a delivery model that’s extremely advantageous to what a US developer might develop at. Absolutely the door is open here.

A caveat that I would offer though is one that’s similar to what we see in early stage companies even here in the U.S. And that is an understanding of the complexity of the health care system within the country. As we see some tech entrepreneurs who are flipping out of tech and into health, they’re bringing fantastic creativity and energy, and ideas in business models. However, in some cases, they need to get up to speed quickly and more thoroughly in terms of the complexities with the space as well, whether that’s security or privacy or the level of connectedness that’s going to be required to create real value. That’s one of the challenges for those who are outside of the US bringing solutions here as well.

Indu Subaiya: I think that’s a point well taken. The amount of education that companies are going to need about how to operate at scale I think is going to — there’s a big increase for that.

Lastly, among the entrepreneur community, clearly one of the big things in the news lately has been Aetna’s acquisition of iTriage and it’s been one of the stories that people have said well, finally there’s an exit for a company in the space coming up this way. Do you see more events like this? Is there a concern at all about a bubble in the space? I know that conversation has come up a little bit among people I’ve spoken with, there’s so much new money, there’s so many new funding models. On the one hand, it’s terrific, this is finally perhaps heating up in the right way for entrepreneurs, but is it heating up at the right level, is it too much heat?

Thomas: My sense is that within our space the number of companies who are creating lots of energy and perhaps less revenue, in some cases aren’t over-invested in yet. I think the venture community has done a decent job at putting some caps on explosive growth. So, there are still tremendous ideas out there, lots of early stage. If you flashback 10 years, getting cloud infrastructure today precludes a lot of investment that had to happen 10 years ago just from a start up standpoint. You can test ideas with two employees and very few dollars that you couldn’t do back then which is why I think having lived through prior bubbles, the characteristics of this opportunity phase as I see it in our industry is just different at the fundamental level than before. There is capital out there, but I think it’s being deployed more judiciously.

Indu Subaiya: Fantastic! We’re really excited to have you join us in Boston and thanks for sharing your perspective with us today.

Thomas: My pleasure! Thank you guys! I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.

For those of you that didn’t catch it on Twitter, the next Health 2.0 Show has been moved to Tuesday, May 1st at 10:00am PST.

Since Health 2.0 entered the scene in 2007, we’ve strived to create an ecosystem where introductions, partnerships and collaborations are easily fostered and sustained. This month’s episode will feature a few of the exciting relationships and stories we’ve seen develop from the Health 2.0 stage, the Developer Challenge and our newest endeavor, Matchpoint. We’ll be joined by special guests, Vidya Raman-Tangella of United Health Group and Joanne Rohde of Axial Project Inc, who will talk about their experiences at the inaugural Matchpoint last fall.

We’ll also announce the line-up for the Launch! session, a showcase of buzzworthy companies we’ve hand-selected to debut at Health 2.0. Also feature will be upcoming agenda highlights from the Spring Fling Boston Matchpoint, as well as some of the biggest headlines from Health2News.com, and take a look at what our team in Europe has planned for Health 2.0 Europe this November.

For Health 2.0 Show sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jennifer Lee.

Indu Subaiya: Hi Doug and Scott, thanks for joining us. We’ve known you since 2007 when you were running DailyStrength. You guys actually presented at Health 2.0’s inaugural conference, which was really fun. So before we talk about your current venture, I would love to get your observations of how you think the industry has changed since you were doing DailyStrength, and what that experience taught you?

Indu Subaiya: Today, I’m speaking to Michael Laskoff, CEO of AbilTo. Michael, welcome! You’ll be joining us at the Health 2.0 Boston Spring Fling for our Fireside Chat session on May 14th. As you know, Boston is going to focus a lot on partnerships in the Health 2.0 space and you have a very interesting story to share that we’ll get to in a bit. First, I want to talk about the online behavioral health space. We’ve observed your company for a few years, and there’s some really interesting work going on in this space. You are one of the leading innovators, so tell us about AbilTo and walk us through some of your programs today.

Michael Laskoff: Well, first of all, I should thank Health 2.0, which has been a great supporter of AbilTo over the past couple of years, and more specifically, helping us meet Aetna at one of your events. Actually, we were doing our very first demo ever on stage, which was at Health 2.0 in San Francisco, about a year and a half ago.

As you said, AbilTo is attempting to bring innovation into the behavioral health space, not only because behavioral health needs innovation, but because behavioral health is one of the very best ways to help combat rising healthcare costs in general, in critical categories like cardiac patients, diabetics and people who are suffering from chronic pain. If you actually add those three categories up, it accounts for some enormous portion of the amount of money that we spend as a country on the medical healthcare for individuals. But we have a fairly simple epiphany, if you can alleviate depression in individuals reliably, that you can in fact do quite a bit to help not only their mental health outlook but actually their total health outlook. So what’s good for individuals is good also for the people who are paying for their care.

Most people think of The Sopranos, sitting in an office, talking about their childhood to hopefully a very nice therapist. It’s a terrific thing for some people, but for people who have specific depression related issues that are triggered by things like heart attacks, we believe that there’s a far better approach. That approach is to help people change their behaviors in ways that are clinically proven by science to actually help people feel better.

What we do is we offer, in partnership with Aetna for example, a program called Cardiac Health Forum. With Cardiac Health Forum, we identify individuals together who have in fact, recently been hospitalized by a cardiac condition. When they come out of the hospital,Aetna helps us to contact them, with the permission of their member of course, and get them enrolled in a program. The entire program is completed remotely and this is where the technology part comes in. 100% of our services offered are via telephone, but most people actually are doing it via web-based video conference. The web-based program gives people the advantages of being face-to-face, that sense of intimacy and connectedness that we think of, but with convenience and lack of stigma, and doing it on your own time and place of choosing.

All materials are generated by us and we’re recording, in real time, quite a bit of empirical information that then allows us to actually substantiate the degree of improvement that someone is having. Almost 85% of all the people who start one of our programs actually finish. Now, that’s 16 sessions over 8 weeks, which is quite a lot. So, the fact that 85% finishes something we’re excited about. Also, the degree of depression that we’re helping to alleviate is in the neighborhood of anywhere from 75%, and in some cases upwards of 90%. In before and after, on an increasing number of individuals, we are able to track how they are actually doing by way of depression. Working with Aetna and with some of our partners we are now actually beginning to translate what those depression reductions mean in terms of cost savings and claim savings. So that was a long answer but that’s what we do in a very large nutshell.

Indu Subaiya: I recall from my medical school training that the ability to influence recurrence of an event after being discharged from the hospital is very high, just with things like support groups and mechanisms that address stress. I think you can see a real difference in outcomes. So, in that cohort are you focusing on just depression or is it kind of overall kind of lifestyle management issues?

Michael Laskoff: We would say that we are a complement to the kinds of disease management and coordinated care systems that large payers already put into place. By the way and thanks for bringing up the point about recurrence because that really is crucial. If someone has unfortunately had to be in the hospital for a cardiac situation what everyone wants to do is make sure that they don’t have to go back in.

What we do know is that about one in two patients who have been in the hospital for heart related events suffer depression, and it’s effectively one of the leading indicators of not only if they go back into the hospital, but when. One in four depressed individuals will be back in the hospital in six months versus one in four individuals who are not depressed. Their actual time to go back to the hospital is about 42 months, and there is a tremendous difference in terms of length of stay. If you are depressed, on an average, you will be in the hospital about 13 days and if you are not depressed, you will be in the hospital for about 4. It’s worth pointing out that being re-hospitalized doesn’t actually help anyone, doesn’t make people healthier, doesn’t add to their quality of life, per se. It just falls into the rubric of preventable conditions.

So, as I mentioned up to half of all cardiac patients suffer depression and 20% of all people who are diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes suffer depression when they find out that they are, in fact, diabetic. If you look at the number of people who are suffering chronic pain, who are collecting health benefits at this point, an enormous number of them are depressed. So, we are primarily focused on depression, on some anxiety but we don’t do any of the -– the sort of -– I call it almost like exotic things. People who require traditional in-patient care for example, should in fact continue to get that. People who need intensive community based services should in fact get that. This is kind of for the 80% that falls into the everybody else category.

Indu Subaiya: Those are staggering statistics about the role of depression and re-hospitalization after cardiac event. In terms of tracking these outcomes, will you be collecting data on a longitudinal basis or a pilot arrangement to track whether you can make these larger impacts?

Michael Laskoff: Absolutely. As I said, we have been providing program service to Aetna for coming up on about 7 months now. It’s a three months program and we are just getting to the point of being able to do the initial 90 days follow ups. What we know from the clinical literature that’s coming at us is in fact, there is a lot of contention about how one even does that lateral study. There is obviously great enthusiasm on the part of Aetna and some of the other health plans that we talking to at this point. Frankly, the alternatives aren’t very good and there is quite a bit of literature on the somewhat disappointing results of anti-depressants on mild and moderate depression cases. So that, giving them to people, who very frequently are taking many different medications already, doesn’t necessarily improve any kind of outcome and doesn’t really prevent cost. Of course, it’s easy for doctors to prescribe and therefore it becomes very prevalent.

We’re in the process of tracking and it’ll probably take us the better part to 6-9 months to begin to build a compelling, peer-reviewed quality set of figures on that. In the meantime I think what almost everyone is concluding is that what they’re doing currently isn’t coming anywhere near close enough to meeting their needs. So we’re meeting with a great deal of enthusiasm. This year in particular we’re actually trying to get these things implemented faster, particularly because anything anyone can do to cut their re-hospitalization rates prior to 2014 has become a pretty appealing.

Indu Subaiya: Absolutely! To how many people has the Aetna Cardiac Program been made available?

Michael Laskoff: I can’t give you the specifics but what I can tell you it’s a healthy three figure number and we’re increasing the number per week. Aetna is really to be commended, they are a big, complicated system. I think it’s probably rivals the US and the UN rolled into one happy equation. It’s been a lot of work to identify, get gears to mesh, to get these people identified and then deliver.

Aetna isn’t merely suggesting to these folks that they call us, they are actually really getting the permission of that individual, passing that information on to us and we are contacting those people. If Aetna does get a person to us, if we actually get permission to contact that individual, we are actually getting an initial meeting setup with almost half of them. Which when you look at it, the difficulty of just getting people to engage in things that are good for them, it’s pretty extraordinary that we’ve got into that level. We certainly did not start there.

Indu Subaiya: Congratulations on working at a partnership with a large organization like that. That’s a challenge for any young company. As we wind down here Michael, I’m curious because at Health 2.0, we are interested in the journey of young organizations . Tell us a bit about AbilTo in terms of the number of employees, your financing, where you guys at as a company right now?

Michael Laskoff: Of course! Again, I need to go back and say that actually an important part of everything that we’ve done in terms of fundraising and corporate financing and things of that nature, all of it was accelerated by being recognized by Health 2.0 as an innovator. So, again thank you for that. We now have six people full time, and we have over a 100 people — providers, coaches and therapists. The therapists are in 14 or 15 different states. All of whom we have recruited, trained and in fact when they work for us, only follow our methodology.

In terms of development work, we are proud of the fact that we are actually based on angel money only this quarter and management investments. We’ve reached the point where we are crossing into cash flow positive territory on our own, and as a result of that,  I’m pleased to say a number of strategic partners have expressed interest in investing. We’re probably looking at taking a small A Round hopefully in the next 90-120 days and we’ll be using that for what I say is the most challenging aspect of operating as a new company in this space, and that is the incredibly long sales cycle to get health plans on board. With Aetna, it was a very fast process, certainly by the standards of the industry. But we don’t thing that will be the case and we hear all kinds of stories of people reporting that it takes 10, 12, 14 months to close partnerships that everybody wants. We are hoping to go quite a bit faster than that but nevertheless, we’ve got to secure lot of resources to get those kind of efforts underway. Hopefully, we will be doing that and we will continue building the organization much faster through the remainder of this year.

Indu Subaiya: That’s really impressive, and one of the things we recognized from our vantage point is exactly what you said, that long runway leading to a deal with these larger players. It’s one of services that we provide, for example, with formats like Matchpoint; to help accelerate those conversations as well. Lastly, as CEO of a Health 2.0 start up, do you want to share one of your lessons learned as a CEO for other tech leaders out there?

Michael Laskoff: Yes, actually just one, which is be very skeptical of the people who tell you that something is impossible. Specifically with regard to the health space because it is very difficult to work with large partners to help them affect a change, but it is entirely possible. Generally it seems to be a factor of how badly you want it. We want it badly, and we are in one of those great situations where as our investors do better, we actually bring  more joy and alleviate suffering, on hopefully a very, very large scale. But it’s that sort of dogmatic belief that you can do things that other people have said is too hard, it doesn’t work. It’s the effort that really does seem to make the difference. I wish that we had known sooner how doggedly we had to pursue alignments with the existing payments channels. The fact that we are able to work within existing payment structures, for very large companies, does an immense amount to make our proposition easier. Many other people are out there trying to hack it out, trying to get people to invest in new things that require lot of work on the part of a big partner in order to engage.

Indu Subaiya: Michael thanks for both the inspiration and update on an amazing amount of progress!

• Phil Carter, CEO, JiffPad
• Daniel Kivatinos & Michael Nusimow, Co-founders, Dr. Chrono
• Ben Chodor, CEO, Happtique
• Steve Schelhammer, CEO, Phytel

We also debuted our news segment, which highlights top stories from Health2News.com. Stay tuned until the end to hear more about our upcoming events: the Health 2.0 Spring Fling Matchpoint Boston and our fall conference.

The show was cut short due to technical difficulties and we were unable to include demos from Alexander Borve of iDoc24 and the winners of the popHealth Developer Challenge, but look for them in future episodes!

Other announcements that were cut short included:

• Health 2.0 Spring Fling Matchpoint Boston, May 14-15, 2012.
• Health 2.0 Fall Conference October 7-10, 2012
• Health 2.0 Europe November 6-7, 2012 in Berlin, Germany.
• Health 2.0 at SXSW:
• Social Health StartUp Bootcamp: Friday, March 9th 2:00-6:00 at the Hilton Downtown Austin
• Hack-a-thon: Friday, March 9th, 6:00pm at the Austin Convention Center
• A panel featuring our own Indu Subaiya: Crowdsourcing a Revolution: Can We Fix Healthcare?: Saturday, March 10th, 11:00 at the AT&T Conference Hotel, Room 204
• Health 2.0 & StartUp Health Party: Monday, March 12th, 6:30pm at the Hangar Lounge

If you logged on, thanks for watching our show, and stay up-to-date with future webinar announcements at health2news.com.

Again, we apologize for the technical issues and we hope to see you next time!

Thank You,
The Health 2.0 Team

Join us February 29th for the first Health 2.0 Show of 2012. We’re working with our friends at HCPLive to bring you an exciting and packed show to kick off the new year. This episode will focus on innovative tools for physicians including products that transform and aid in everything from scheduling to follow-up. We’ll be joined by four specials guests who will discuss and demo their products:

• Phil Carter, CEO, JiffPad
• Daniel Kivatinos & Michael Nusimow, Co-founders, Dr. Chrono
• Ben Chodor, CEO, Happtique
• Steve Schelhammer, CEO, Phytel

We also have an interview and demo with Alexander Borve, founder and CEO of iDoc24 and leader of the Health 2.0 Stockholm chapter. Other agenda highlights include a demo from the popHealth Tool Developer Challenge winner, news highlights from Health2News.com and an update on the Health 2.0 Spring Fling Matchpoint in Boston this May.

For Health 2.0 Show sponsorship opportunities, please contact Jennifer Lee.

Co-Hosts: