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Health Care Originals (HCO) made headlines this year after pitching at the first JazzTech event – a collaboration between URVentures and Cranberry Capital. While HCO’s pitch was for their Series A round, they took the opportunity to acknowledge Cranberry Capital as a major investor in their Series Seed round.
“Evaluating ADAMM started as a university project in the Technical Entrepreneurship And Management (TEAM) Masters program at the University of Rochester. The co-founders became aware of the ADAMM technology when looking through the UR Ventures website as part of the program,” said Jared Dwarika, co-founder of HCO. “One of the co-founders has asthma, and the story of asthma attacks resonates with us.”
Today and throughout the TEAM program, the co-founders have coaches with diverse business backgrounds and startup experience. “The TEAM program is adept at providing the foundation for tech entrepreneurship. This, combined with the founders’ more than 44 years of management and leadership experience, led the team to develop a real-world business plan around the technology,” said Dwarika. The team won the 2013 Mark Ain business plan competition at University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business.
The real-world aspect of ADAMM is part of the reason the project attracted Cranberry Capital to contribute seed funding. “The whole project is based on a real practical problem you see every day,” said Dwarika. HCO is targeting their first iteration of their platform technology for Asthmatic children. The 5.5 million children (ages 5 to 17) with asthma are HCO’s focus because they tend to have the greatest difficulty controlling their asthma and often need to seek emergency treatment.
As a result, HCO has created a business model based around consumer healthcare. “In consumer healthcare, a patient is seeking an additional means of taking care of their chronic disease,” explained Dwarika. “Their doctor will recommend a product, or a patient finds out about a product and asks their doctor for an opinion.” There will be no prescription required for ADAMM, but it is important for everyone to stay in the loop for effective adoption of the product. That includes both physicians and parents who want to make sure that their children are receiving the best healthcare possible.
That’s not to say that HCO will solely focus on asthmatic children. As a platform technology, there are many potential applications especially in other respiratory fields. The company eventually plans to expand its offering to specialized products to monitor respiratory performance that can be used in both a research setting and as a diagnostic tool in hospitals.
ADAMM image courtesy of HCO.
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