Our Investment in Nutrimedy
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— written by Khatantuul Zorig
We’re very excited to announce the addition of Nutrimedy to our portfolio! Their press release for their seed round can be found here.
Why is nutrition or diet important?
Did you know that 1 in 3 Americans have multiple chronic conditions (MCC)[1]? Chronic conditions — such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease — are those that last more than 1 year and require ongoing medical attention or limit daily living. That means over 100 million people suffer from MCC, and they are directly and indirectly driving over 70% of US total healthcare spending ($2.5 trillion). As extreme as these numbers are, they are only expected to rapidly increase to unprecedented levels [2] with the growth in the aging population. By 2060, Americans 65+ are projected to double to 98 million [2], and more than 80% of this population will be dealing with MCC [3].
Did you also know that balanced nutritional intake is at the core of preventing and managing most of these chronic conditions [4]? Clinical nutritional care has been an integral part of inpatient care for decades and has been shown to reduce costs and improve outcomes for over 50 conditions such as heart failure, diabetes, and cystic fibrosis. However, most of these 100 million MCC patients don’t get the clinical nutritional guidance they need due to an outdated and extremely inefficient delivery model.
- Providers have limited, manual, costly, or no nutritional counseling capabilities for both inpatient & outpatient settings. Finding & seeing a registered dietitian outside the healthcare ecosystem is extremely burdensome and inconvenient to the patients. So when these MCC patients are ordered by their doctor to see a registered dietitian, they don’t get the on-going nutritional counseling care they need.
- The latest digital clinical products targeted towards the MCC population seem to be only addressing diabetes without fully recognizing the unique needs of those with other conditions and failing to recognize that nutritional requirements for diabetes-only patients are quite different from diabetes-plus-another-chronic-condition.
- Lastly, most of the current nutrition tracking or health coaching apps target the wellness space and do not seem to be at the clinical level to effectively help those with MCC.
Ensuring these MCC patients get the clinical nutritional care to help address their unique needs is the core mission of Nutrimedy.
Enter Nutrimedy
Nutrimedy is revolutionizing the clinical nutrition delivery model by building the 1st platform that provides clinical nutrition counseling to MCC patients.
Founded by Jonah Cohen and Karolina Starczak, who are deep clinical experts in nutritional counseling & gastroenterology, Nutrimedy provides a tele-nutrition service enabled by an AI-powered HIPAA compliant web and mobile application and a network of 1000+ registered dietitians covering 140+ conditions.
The platform provides automatic matching of the MCC patients to the right expert registered dietitian from the network, convenient scheduling & holding of video sessions with the registered dietitian, easy tracking of nutritional intake through photo-based meal log, monitoring of progress through automated trackers, and being supported by the registered dietitian through on-going secure messaging at the patient’s finger tips.
For MCC patients, Nutrimedy is increasing access to clinical nutritional counseling through health systems, pharma companies, and health plans. It is also making the clinical nutritional counseling experience more convenient, streamlined, ongoing, and flexible through the AI-based messaging, nutrition tracking, and video sessions for better health outcome & effectiveness.
For providers, MCC patients are one of the biggest drivers of revenue & cost. With the Nutrimedy platform to supplement their in-house registered dietitians in providing more effective & scalable care to their increasing backlog of inpatient/outpatient MCC patients needing clinical nutrition counseling, providers can increase their reimbursable revenue by more effectively addressing the entire MCC population. With the efficiency gained through the automation in the platform, we estimate an average registered dietitian’s effort will decrease by over 60% potentially driving up to 4 times the reimbursable revenue to the providers.
Looking forward
We’re thrilled to work with the Nutrimedy team and support them in their quest, and are excited for what the future holds for them. With the ever-increasing population of MCC patients and the corresponding healthcare spending skyrocketing both in the US and globally, we see the need for accessible, personalized, and convenient clinical nutritional counseling to play a bigger role for all stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem. With their expert leadership team, the network of dietitians, and the AI-powered platform, we believe Nutrimedy is perfectly positioned to enable this future.
Innospark Ventures is a Boston-based VC investing in founders and ideas that leverage advanced AI to create a differential, disruptive impact for our economy and society. Learn more: https://innosparkventures.com
