500 logo
avoMD Brings Standardized Clinical Protocols at the Point of Care

Even as the healthcare industry becomes increasingly digitized, physicians have to often digest clinical knowledge by reviewing guidelines in PDF form or static HTML pages at the point of care.

2020.12.10

500 Global Team

500 Global Team

Article image

The challenge of deploying clinical decision-support tools is not new to the medical industry, but it is now being magnified by the influx of COVID-19 patients. As such, we are excited by avoMD, a platform that aims to provide on-demand decision support for clinicians at the point of care. The company, which joins our first virtual accelerator program, is tackling a real concern in healthcare, using technology to address a growing need.

The Nuts & Bolts 

Problem: Even as the healthcare industry becomes increasingly digitized, physicians have to often digest clinical knowledge by reviewing guidelines in PDF form or static HTML pages at the point of care. Furthermore, medical knowledge is growing rapidly, doubling every 73 days, making it nearly impossible for clinicians to access and stay abreast of best practices.

Solution: avoMD could provide a better way for physicians to use and learn evidence-based protocols at the point of care by enabling hospitals to deploy decision support tools across its provider base.

When 500 Met avoMD 

We met the avoMD team through an introduction by a former 500 employee. We felt that the team’s background made them qualified to build a solution in the healthcare space. 

Joongheum (“PJ”​) Park, Co-Founder and CTO, originally wanted to build a tool to improve his performance and education as a practicing physician. PJ is a practicing internal medicine physician and clinical informatician, and served as an Associated Harvard Medical Faculty at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Internist/clinical informatics fellow at New York Presbyterian-Columbia University Medical Center.

His vision was supported by a friend, current Co-Founder and CEO Yair Saperstein. Yair served as the Chief resident at NYC Health + Hospitals, Inpatient Medicine Chief Resident at Kings County Hospital Center, and Co-Founded two non-profit organizations, StartScience and Teach4Kids.

The two brought on a third Co-Founder with additional business strengths and software building experience. Laurence Coman, COO, holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, where he studied entrepreneurship and healthcare, and worked on the investment team at Vector Capital, a private equity firm focused on software investments.

As our startups begin implementing ESG criteria, avoMD helps achieve the third goal of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.”

Why Now?

The pandemic has pushed healthcare needs to the forefront as we search for innovative and useful solutions. In the US, 45% of adults do not receive the standard of care. This gap leads to $52.3 billion in wasted healthcare spending.

COVID-19 highlighted a critical flaw that has existed for some time in hospital-protocol creation and its utilization. Physicians are given PDFs of clinical protocols that comply with hospital policies and have to implement them, which can lead to confusion.

At the same time, medical knowledge is multiplying. While COVID-19 treatment and best practices change quickly, other care standards are also quickly evolving, and physicians need a way to stay on top of treatment protocols. 

Medical knowledge at the point of care can at times be inaccessible. Physicians must deal with unwieldy interfaces and poor clinical workflow integrations. Consequently, physicians and patients suffer. Whereas research shows a correlation between protocol utilization and higher quality metrics and cost savings. 

Technical solutions are changing healthcare, thanks to regulations such as the 21st Century Cures Act, which mandates electronic health record vendors to open up their APIs to third party software vendors, such as avoMD. 

Future of avoMD 

Because of their medical field experience, avoMD’s founders understand what physicians and hospitals need to improve performance and patient care. Among the many platform upgrades and new features, the team plans to provide hospitals with a complete analytics suite to understand user behavior and provide a dashboard to institutional customers to help measure ROI.

If you are an investor and would like to learn more about companies, sectors, and trends that we are excited about as well as receive invitations to exclusive previews and expert roundtables, please sign up here

If you would like to connect with the company directly, you can learn more at https://www.avomd.io/.

Legal Disclaimers: 500 Startups programs (including accelerator programs), investor education services, strategic partnership consulting services and events are operated by 500 Startups Incubator, L.L.C. (together with its affiliates, “500 Startups”) and the funds advised by 500 Startups Management Company, L.L.C. do not participate in any revenue generated by these activities. Such programs and services are provided for educational and informational purposes only and under no circumstances should any content provided as part of any such programs, services or events be construed as investment, legal, tax or accounting advice by 500 startups or any of its affiliates.

The views expressed here are those of the individual 500 Startups personnel, or other individuals quoted and are not the views of 500 Startups or its affiliates. Certain information contained herein may have been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by 500 Startups. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, 500 Startups has not independently verified such information and makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy of the information in this post or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements or links; 500 Startups has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein.

This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, tax or accounting advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation, offer to sell or solicitation to purchase any investment securities, or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by 500 Startups. (An offering to invest in an 500 Startups fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by 500 Startups, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. 

Charts and graphs provided herein are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Unless otherwise expressly stated, figures are based on internal estimates and have not been independently verified. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. All logos and trademarks of third parties referenced herein are the logos and trademarks of their respective owners and any inclusion of such trademarks or logos does not imply or constitute any approval, endorsement or sponsorship of 500 Startups by such owners. 

Please see Section 2 of our Terms of Use for additional important information.

Copyright © 2024. 500 Global  All rights reserved.
xfacebookinstagramlinkedin