A Grandma in Your Pocket

Announcing Rough Draft Ventures’ investment in Nightingale

Forgetting to take your vitamin in the morning might seem like a harmless mistake in your mind, but medicine adherence is a problem across the nation. Each year, pharmaceutical companies lose an estimated $188 billion because patients forget to take their medication. Thousands of people are re-admitted to emergency rooms and hospitals because they forget to take medications that would otherwise keep them healthy. It’s a huge problem, and a preventable one at that.

For this reason, I’m proud to announce Rough Draft Ventures’ investment in Nightingale, a mobile tool that uses smartphone sensors to intelligently remind patients to take their medication and caregivers to check in on their loved ones. Delian and his co-founder Eric have a terrific product sense and are dedicated to building tools that change people’s lives for the better. What was the inspiration? Delian realized that grandfathers were taking medication not because they were remembering, but because their grandmothers were bugging them at the right time. The goal, in Delian’s words, is to have a “grandmother in your pocket.”

The team at Rough Draft couldn’t have been more excited for the opportunity to support a startup that a colleague was building. We’re backing one of our own, and doing so is a testament to our love for Delian’s product vision.

Over the coming months, Nightingale will begin rolling out to patients and physician networks nationwide. Making even a small dent to that $188 billion number means fewer fatalities and more time with loved ones.