Midwest health startups are attracting a lot of investment. With the recent Series B funding of $120 million for Forge Biologics and the continued hundreds of millions invested in Olive, Columbus and other Midwest cities like Ann Arbor and Minneapolis are helping the Midwest grow into hub for digital health companies. Plus, an abundance of top, nationally recognized hospitals (Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Michigan Medicine, and the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus) have created an amazing environment for digital healthcare companies and health tech startups.
Using AI for processes, developing accessible telemedicine . . . whatever these companies are doing, they're creating innovative technology that is changing medicine and wellness.
Looking for a job in a health startup or digital healthcare company in the Midwest? Here are some of our top picks for digital health companies in the Midwest where you might find your next job.
Top Digital Health Companies in the Midwest
1. Workit Health
Workit Health was founded by two friends in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who met in addiction recovery and realized many of their friends were falling through the cracks in treatment. The idea is simple: bring addiction treatment online through a virtual platform with dedicated providers who coordinate appointments and medication for recovery support. During the COVID-19 pandemic, insurance companies changed regulations that used to require people to attend first addiction treatment appointments in person, which created an opportunity for Workit Health to help people find more convenient, affordable, private recovery care. Workit Health is currently hiring for a COO, inside sales rep, senior accountant, and lead engineer.
2. Boon Health
Another Michigan startup with a focus on health and wellness, Boon Health has created a platform for online coaching to support wellness within corporate teams. You can become a remote Boon coach part-time, or work for the company itself. Employers use Boon to offer personalized coaching to their team members, to help with professional challenges and satisfaction at work.
P.S. If you're interested in learning more about this topic, Boon co-founder and CEO Alex Simmons will be speaking at the free virtual panel on mental wellbeing in the startup workplace on May 25th. RSVP for access.
3. Aduro
Aduro focuses on corporate wellness, but with an emphasis on metrics for six key areas of concern for employers supporting their team’s optimal performance: mindset and resilience, purpose and contribution, lifestyle and health, relationships and community, development and growth, and money and prosperity. If you get a job with Aduro, expect it to be focused on data-driven wellness programs as well as “bringing humanity back to employee wellness programs,” which we love. The Pacific Northwest-based company is hiring in Detroit among other locations. They offer short e-books on how to help employees through COVID-19 burnout, the strain of juggling multiple roles as a working mother, and other well-considered advice that doesn’t constantly demand more from employees without adequate human support.
4. Honesti
Honesti is a wellness support app for college students that supports peer-to-peer counseling. This Ann Arbor startup reports a 35% increase in the number of college students receiving mental health support since 2014, but that number doesn’t include the 40% of students polled who report self-identifying as needing to reach out for mental health support but not doing so. The startup was founded by students in business administration and computer science at the University of Michigan who saw a need for real-time support that was easily accessible to students on campuses that struggle to provide enough mental health resources.
5. Qodex
Qodex uses automation and AI to solve problems for healthcare clients, using data science and analytics to keep sustainable quality and growing revenue on target for healthcare systems. Qodex is a Detroit-based software startup, with a culture of forward-thinking team players bent on creating next-generation solutions using data science and software. Love to use AI to analyze massive amounts of data? Qodex would love to hire Detroit-based developers, engineers, analysts, and a software architect.
6. DocNetwork
We love DocNetwork, a tech company in the health space. DocNetwork is another great Ann Arbor startup with a friendly culture. They manage electronic health records for summer camps and schools. The DocNetwork team is a team dedicated to a value of “honest work.” If you like tech startups and want to focus on a solution to the problem of health record management, this is a unique and perfect fit for you. DocNetwork works with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, YMCA, public and charter schools, and even universities. The startup is looking for people to help with implementation, sales, and business development.
7. Olive
An AI company focused in healthcare, Olive offers solutions to healthcare inefficiencies and untapped value. Olive is based in Columbus, and is a hyper-growth tech company putting the Midwest startup scene on the map. They're hiring for remote jobs, and are currently looking for multiple positions in engineering as well as other roles such as marketing, user experience, and analytics.
8. Zipnosis
Minneapolis is a huge hub of great health startups. Zipnosis from Minneapolis has created a telehealth portal solution that is more than a secure HIPAA-compliant video conferencing app. Known as Zip, the telehealth startup manages patient care from clinical data to post-operative and behavioral health, aiming to save providers time and make care more convenient for patients. They’re the originators of health care's Digital Front Door® and are already working with a number of major medical systems to revolutionize digital healthcare. Zip is hiring for dozens of open positions from finance to marketing jobs.
9. Learn To Live
Another Minneapolis startup, Learn To Live takes on the challenge of cognitive behavioral therapy via telehealth for areas of concern during the COVID-19 pandemic: grief, anxiety and depression, professional burnout, and children’s mental health. Learn To Live has been featured in PsychCentral, Marie Claire, U.S. News & World Report. The telehealth program can be offered through employers, healthcare providers, and educational institutions, blanketing the U.S. with a convenient option for dealing with the pandemic of stress and mental health challenges that have multiplied during the pandemic. We expect these trends in telehealth to be here to stay, having only accelerated an adoption of technology for healthcare that was already in progress. Learn To Live is always accepting resumes to join their team.
10. PhysIQ
Out of Chicago, PhysIQ rounds out our list because it offers a personalized analytics and cloud-based IT platform to provide individualized insights on patient health based on deviations from a measured baseline. The data is complex, but the concept is brilliantly simple: PhysIQ technology learns a patient’s individual vital sign patterns and extracts insights based on changes over time. This startup claims the world’s most robust and scalable platform for continuous biosensor data capture and AI-based analytics. Pretty cool if you love data, AI solutions, and biometric sensing technology. This is a one-of-a-kind job opportunity for someone in the digital health space. PhysIQ is hiring for developer roles and jobs in ops.
11. ScriptDrop
ScriptDrop has been featured in FastCompany, Forbes, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal. They are one of a growing number of Columbus healthcare startups. ScriptDrop integrates telemedicine with prescription delivery, working with health systems, pharmacies, and telemedicine companies. They help them serve patients from doctors’ appointments to prescription refills so patients are less likely to skip refilling needed prescriptions. This startup is unique in its approach of addressing multiple areas of medicine at once, and we’ll be keeping an eye on their growth. ScriptDrop is looking for Columbus-based accounting, account management, and customer success professionals.
12. ArborMetrix
We’ve already listed ArborMetrix in our Best Healthcare Startups, and that’s because this supportive, collaborative Ann Arbor-based startup offers deep insights to measure and advance patient care through a variety of analytics solutions for healthcare systems. Already used by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Pathology Quality Registry, and more, ArborMetrix has come a long way since being founded out of a University of Michigan PhD thesis. ArborMetrix is currently hiring for over a dozen positions in analytics and engineering out of Ann Arbor.
13. Forge Biologics
Ohio’s Forge Biologics calls themselves “the latest in hope,” and for people suffering from rare genetic diseases, that’s about the best way to describe it. Forge has created a gene therapy development engine. The startup manufactures AAV viral vector gene therapies to help patients suffering from devastating rare genetic illnesses, working out of a 175,000-square foot custom facility called The Hearth. The company recently raised $120 million in Series B financing. Forge is hiring scientists, technicians, and a variety of other roles.
14. SpellBound
SpellBound is another great Ann Arbor startup: the tech company makes augmented reality programs (think dancing 3D elephants you can play with on an iPad) to distract children from medical procedures in the hospital, such as blood draws. It’s a creative use of AR technology, currently used by hospital systems to help distract pediatric patients from pain. SpellBound recently created a new more involved game releasing spring 2021 called ARISE, that’s basically a scavenger hunt for kids staying in the hospital.
