DIGITAL HEALTH

Leveraging Software to Lower Costs and Improve the Quality of Care

This panel focuses on investing in innovative digital health products that bring new efficiencies to the healthcare system, change how care is delivered or managed, and how patients are involved in their own care. Panelists will explore topics related to investing in digital health, including:

  • In what kinds of digital health technologies are they interested in investing?
  • What metrics and evidence do you look for in a digital health startup?
  • How can an early stage digital health company demonstrate the value of their products?
  • What are the main challenges for startups raising capital in this space?

The moderator and panelists will discuss this rapidly evolving field of healthcare investment, and will introduce the audience to the key fundraising opportunities and challenges facing digital health entrepreneurs today.

Panelists:

Amit Garg, Managing Partner Tau Ventures (Moderator)

Amit Garg is currently Managing Partner at Tau Ventures, a $15M seed fund in Palo Alto focused on applied AI in digital health, automation (cars, drones, robots), and enterprise.

Key investments Amit Garg has worked on in the past include UniKey (smart locks), nuTonomy (self-driving cars, sold for $450M), BioBeats (machine learning for human well-being, acquired by Huma / Medapod), Glooko (diabetes management), Cohero Health (respiratory management), Terapede (low-dosage X-ray detection), Figure1 (medical communication), HealthifyMe (fitness and health-tracking), Healthy.io (home-based urinalysis) and RapidDeploy (cloud-based emergency response).

Amit Garg has been in Silicon Valley for 20 years — at Samsung NEXT Ventures, cofounded a startup called HealthIQ (as of May 2019 a series D that has raised $120M and valued at $450M), at Norwest Ventures, and doing product and analytics at Google. His academic training is BS in computer science and MS in biomedical informatics, both from Stanford, and MBA from Harvard. He speak natively 3 languages, live carbon-neutral, am a 70.3 Ironman finisher, and have built a hospital in rural India serving 100,000 people.

Dana Callow, Managing Partner Boston Millennia Partners

Mr. Callow is the Managing Partner of Boston Millennia Partners. Prior to founding Boston Millennia Partners, Mr. Callow co-founded the predecessor fund of BMP in 1982. Before that, he worked as a Senior Consultant at Braxton Associates, an international strategic planning firm that was formed by professionals from Bain & Co. and Boston Consulting Group. He worked with Fortune 100 companies in strategic planning and implementing merger and acquisition strategies. Prior to working in the management consulting business, Mr. Callow worked in sales and marketing for Tymshare, Inc. (McDonnell-Douglas). He was formerly Lead Director and Chair of the governance committee of PAREXEL International Corporation (Formerly NasdaqGS:PRXL), a $2.5 billion revenue clinical trials management company sold on September 29,2017 for $5 billion. He is a lead investor in, or has served as, a Director of a number of other public and private companies, including ILEX Oncology, Inc. (Nasdaq: ILXO), a cancer pharmaceutical company acquired by Genzyme for $1 billion; MedAptus, Inc., a mobile computing provider of clinical, financial and administrative software solutions to the medical community; and COTA Healthcare, Inc., a precision medicine company that stores, tracks and analyzes longitudinal clinical and billing data of oncology patients with the goal of improving outcomes and reducing costs. Other investment responsibilities included Glycofi Inc., (acquired by Merck, NYSE: MRK); HotJobs, Inc. (acquired by Yahoo, NasdaqGS: YHOO); iVillage, Inc. (acquired by NBC Universal, a subsidiary of General Electric, NYSE: GE); and Tektagen, Inc. (acquired by Charles River Laboratories, NYSE: CRL)

Mr. Callow is a member of the Advisory Board of the Dartmouth/Tuck Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees and member and past Chairman of the Investment Committee at Tufts University and on the Board of Overseers at Tufts University Medical School. Mr. Callow is a National Board member for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society where he chaired its Therapy Acceleration Program committee. Mr. Callow is a graduate of Tufts University and holds an MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth.

Michael Sidler, General Partner Redalpine

“Out of pure passion!” That’s Michael’s answer to why he co-founded Redalpine in 2006: “Isn’t it incredible to experience how an idea develops into an enterprise? Founders typically start with nothing more than a story and a vision that has to be convincing enough to inspire investors and employees to believe in them.”

During his Ph.D. in molecular biology he soon realized that his interests were much broader. This led him to joining The Boston Consulting Group. During that time, in the dotcom bubble, he made his first steps as a business angel. “I lost more money than I gained, but that only heightened my enthusiasm for startups,” he laughs. Consequentially, in 2003 he joined Prionics, one of the early Swiss role-model startups. Following his passion, he eventually changed the sides of the table to focus entirely on venture capital – because it’s in the hot spot of his interests: “firstly, science, innovation, and technology; secondly, entrepreneurship; and thirdly, the financial world.”

Michael sees venture capital as an indispensable driver of the future economy. “Statistics shows that companies older than five years cumulatively don’t create jobs anymore,” he says. “Job growth comes from young companies.” And that means from startups with visionary founders.

Michael has two daughters and enjoys sports, as does nearly everyone at Redalpine. “And I also like working in the garden,” he says. No wonder: after all, he likes to see his undertakings grow and bear fruits.

Nadav Shimoni, Head of Digital Health Arkin Holdings Ltd

Dr. Nadav Shimoni joined Arkin Holdings in 2020 as head of Digital Health sector. He comes from a diverse background combining experience in medicine together with venture capital, business development, and deep technological project/product management.

Dr. Shimoni is a physician by training, previously the Director of Hospital Business Development at Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest integrated payer-provider system, governing one of the world’s largest and richest longitudinal healthcare database. In parallel, he conducted research in public health focusing on implementation of data/AI-driven solutions in the clinical workflow.

Dr. Shimoni is the founder of 81 HealthTech Network, a 250-members community for IDF intelligence core technological unit alumni active in the HealthTech sector. In his prior positions he served as Head of Business Development at Rambam Medical Center while practicing internal medicine and as an Associate at Accelmed, VC & PE medical device investment firm.

He holds M.D. from Ben Gurion University, Magna Cum Laude.

Brian Laegeler, Principal, Touchdown Ventures

Brian Laegeler joined Touchdown Ventures in the Fall of 2018 to source and execute corporate venture capital investments. He is currently focused on tech-enabled solutions for the pharmaceutical sector. Brian brings over 15 years of investment and corporate advisory experience across multiple industries, geographies, and stages.

Prior to Touchdown, Brian most recently served as vice president of mergers & acquisitions for Loop Capital Markets, where he led transaction execution across sectors such as consumer/retail, software, VR gaming, biotech, industrials, utilities and infrastructure. Prior to Loop, Brian was an equity analyst for Morningstar where he covered generic and specialty pharmaceuticals. His successful recommendations led to the creation of his own hedge fund, Shimpaku Capital, L.P., which significantly outperformed the S&P 500. Earlier in his career, Brian was an associate with RoundTable Healthcare Partners and a senior financial analyst in the mergers & acquisitions group at Bear Stearns.

Brian received a BS in Business Administration, with distinction, from Indiana University and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is also a CPA.

He resides in the Chicago area with his wife and daughter where they support the local food movement via their small-scale farm.