Company Profile:
Ginger.io
Ginger.io is on a mission to drive better health outcomes through the use of passive mobile data and behavioral analytics. Our three-part platform – patient app, behavioral analytics engine, and provider dashboard – gives care providers a window into their patients' health between office visits. Our mobile app uses smartphone sensors to passively collect information about a patient’s daily patterns. Using this data, our machine learning models are able to detect at-risk patients significantly better than the standard of care. Any concerning changes in behavior are communicated to the provider through our simple, action-oriented web dashboard. The Ginger.io platform is part of the care solutions at institutions such as Kaiser Permanente, Novant Health, UCSF, Duke Medical and Cincinnati Children's.
Q: Please tell us how your business idea was conceived. Was there an "aha" moment or did it evolve gradually?
A: Anmol Madan and Karan Singh founded Ginger.io in 2011 after meeting at the MIT Media Lab. Anmol, a computer scientist, has spent the last decade pioneering research using big data and machine learning to model human behavior. Anmol’s initial research focused on the “aha” that the smartphone is the most powerful sensor available. The raw digital data it collects is an incredibly rich source of behavioral information. With advances in machine learning, it’s also the perfect fuel for predictive analytics. From that initial finding, we’ve built Ginger.io on the hypothesis that such technology could result in better care and outcomes for the patient, and cost savings for the healthcare system.
Q: What's the most inventive, innovative, or disruptive aspect of your initiative?
A: At Ginger.io, we believe that your health state is more than your symptoms, blood work, and diagnosis codes. We decided to take a new approach to understanding health, based on understanding daily patterns and behavior. Our behavioral analytics engine, developed at the MIT Media Lab, gives us the unique ability to identify statistical trends for a variety of chronic conditions and detect unusual behavior patterns. Your life is not a series of episodic appointments, and understanding your health shouldn’t be either.
Q: How will it help people live to their greatest potential or contribute to making the world healthier?
A: We believe that gaining a deeper understanding of the whole patient—mentally and physically—will ultimately result in more cost-effective, personalized care. There is a lot of power in alerting an individual and her care providers about an impending depressive episode before it happens. At Ginger.io, we want to use behavioral analytics to drive earlier interventions for at-risk individuals and provide more targeted care.
Q: Five years from now, what would you like to be able to say has been your most important contribution to health?
A: We want to redefine the way the healthcare system thinks about mental and behavioral health. In five years, we want behavioral analytics to be a primary tool for understanding and managing these conditions.
Q: What single word or phrase best describes the culture of your startup and why?
A: Fearless. We’re pursuing a dream that people told us was “impossible” two years ago. Based on first principles, we believed that Ginger.io should exist, and today we’re making it a reality.