Vancouver-based startup Curatio is sitting pretty these days. The four-month old company, part of Wavefront’s Venture Accelerator Program, recently won $100,000 for their innovative health care mobile application at the 7th annual Health 2.0 Conference in Silicon Valley. The contest is Novartis’ global competition to create an innovative health care mobile application
Curatio’s winning application, “ThaliMe”, is an innovative, personalized support and tracking tool designed especially for people with thalassemia. Thalassemia are forms of inherited autosomal recessive blood disorders that originated in the Mediterranean region. The helpful app provides users with a virtual support group and allows direct interaction with healthcare professionals.
“We are honoured to be the winners of this important Novartis initiative,” said CEO Lynda Brown-Ganzert. “Our work at Curatio is passionately dedicated to using mobile technology in ways that help to support, simplify and inspire patients in managing their health. Using our Curatio platform, we were able to develop a tool that will make a real difference in the lives of millions of people living with thalassemia.”
Cofounders Brown-Ganzert and Alireza Davoodi describe the company as “a collective of like minded individuals, focused on creating beautiful and functional products for the health industry.”
ThaliMe seems to be the main product it focuses on. Davoodi told the Wavefront blog that Alireza Davoodi added “Thalassemia is a complex and difficult disease to manage. We worked closely with people living with this condition to develop a unique technical approach that eases the daily demands of disease management within a supportive social mobile environment.”
As well as the $100,000, Curatio will gain a partnership with Novartis Oncology, the sponsors of the Health 2.0 Conference. Novartis is a healthcare company involved in scientific research and the creation of products and services in the areas of pharmaceuticals, nutrition, eye-care and more. It’s Canadian headquarters is located in Dorval, Quebec, with employees across the country. The company invested more than $96 million in research in 2008.
The founders pointed out that a New England Journal of Medicine publication indicated that behaviour is the largest driver of premature death, while patients who are more knowledgeable, skilled and confident about managing their health showed 21 percent lower health care costs.
