Health Transformers
to go to the dentist. Tragically, about two years ago an old high-school friend who was still living in Haida Gwaii died of a heart attack because they didn’t have the first responder resources. We don’t think about it, being in large centers, but that access to care can mean the difference between life and death. So the dance studio lit a fire. What was next on your path to founding Curatio?
Curatio is my third mobile startup. Before Curatio was a company called zuluMe which was based around private social networks. It was beautifully designed, but it was a little ahead of its time - we launched before WhatsApp and saw that wave coming. Before zuluMe, I started GoBe media, a massive multiplayer online game for kids with a strong mobile component. That was super cool, but again, we were way too early for the market. But we could see what was happening in Asia and Europe, the penetration of mobile devices and the increasing way that people were using them for information, education and entertainment.
cation is incredibly complex. It takes a very diverse and multi-talented team to pull that together and at the heart of game theory is behavioral science and psychology. I find that the “gamification of health” comes from a very external perspective. How do we get the patient to do more of what we want them to do, as opposed to what does a patient need to do, or what does a patient want to do and how do we empower them. Those are very different approaches. Curatio is used in over 70 countries. Give us a snapshot of what it’s like to have such a global focus?
One of the great benefits of building a business in Canada is the diversity of the country itself. Even on our team, we have diversity of culture, gender, language and orientation. Secondly, we invest as a country heavily in R&D and we invest and support emerging companies. In some cases it’s unprecedented how the government rallies around researchers and entrepreneurs and supports their work, especially work that is solving really big problems.
How did your experience in the gaming industry at Entertainment Arts (EA) translate to health innovation?
Why has it been so important to grow as a global company versus having a focus on North America?
There are similarities in how to think about engagement, the narrative and the immersive story experience. To replicate the success from the gaming world in healthcare would be extremely powerful. We’re very focused on that at Curatio. A lot of people who feel isolated or stigmatized find empowerment through games. How can we inject that empowerment into the patient experience using some of those same game theories and immersive experiences?
Access to care is a global problem. That’s why being part of StartUp Health is so important, because we’re all working on this together and we can fast track making linkages between countries.
What’s your take on the “gamification of healthcare” as a buzzword or trending concept?
Generally, I think it is naive. Gamifi24
Issue 3
Curatio is a multi-faceted product. You combine social network theory with daily disease management tools to aid patient retention and care navigation. You also license a SaaS platform to pharmaceutical companies, payers and providers. What element of the product gets you the most excited right now?
StartUp Health Magazine
Telling Your Story Brown-Ganzert pitched Curatio on Dragons’ Den, a Shark Tank-style show that airs on Canadian TV. She gained a few new investors, and these valuable lessons:
1 Know your audience and customize and articulate for them.
2 Know your numbers. Financials, user rates, costs, clinical evidence, everything.
3 Know yourself. Pitching is stressful, so know your pressure points and how to push through them.
I’m really proud that we are in 70 countries and four languages and growing. We’ve got community managers now in Egypt, Italy, Greece and India. Just the other day I saw that we have a super-user in Macedonia! We’re using AI to provide a kind of health buddy who navigates patients and their families through every stage. It’s not just about adherence and care plan management, but about prevention and wellness all the way through the care continuum. We’re also starting to fill a big gap in patient acquisition. Providers may have a patient in their system, but not know where they go for support and what they consider “home base” when they have a tough day. We help provide that kind of home base, helping with patient retention and creating robust patient groups. Describe for us a lightbulb moment when you saw that Curatio was more than a good business idea – it was helping people in tangible ways.
Early on we did a closed beta for young adult survivors of cancer. We had a couple hundred users from around the world including a young fellow who had a rare form of cancer. He was in his early twenties and he’d never met anyone else with the same form of cancer. On our platform, he met his match, another young person with the same type of cancer in the US. Talking to him about the elation and the sense of not being alone in the world was so powerful. A second example was a group of women that had heart disease. They were spending 45 minutes a day on the platform, visiting up to 10 times a day. We saw statistically significant improvements in their health outcomes, adherence and self management. That’s when the lightbulb really turns on and you realize you’re making a valuable difference to actual health outcomes, their ability to self manage and their ability to navigate.