Eric Dy, Co-founder & CEO of Bloomlife

Bloomlife is a women’s health company solving the most significant yet underserved global challenges today in maternal health. In the future, our goal is to provide evidence-based solutions combining connected devices with data analytics to increase access to care, provide personalized feedback to moms, and help doctors earlier predict and manage pregnancy complications. By addressing modifiable risk factors, detecting abnormalities, and predicting adverse events, Bloomlife aims to ensure every family gets a healthy start.

Personalize Health Data: Maternal Health & Health Equity

One of the biggest challenges for underserved communities is access to care, either because they live far away from a hospital, they work multiple jobs where they can’t get to the doctor’s appointment, or as we’re finding there is distrust of the medical system. We are one of four companies of phase two award from the Maternal Child Health Bureau for deploying these technologies in underserved urban communities. We’ve been working on and testing in partnership with some folks at UCSF, Black Infant Health Program to see how these technologies can improve access to information. We’re changing the power dynamics between the providers and patients, empowering women with information so they feel like they are in greater control. The end goal is to have these kinds of products, which currently are not reimbursed to be fully reimbursed.

Moving the Needle: Payers, Providers and Investors

Investors should know that this is a really valuable space. The costs associated with maternal health and adverse events are significant. They’re usually one of the top three cost drivers for employers. Complications are getting worse, demographics are changing and something needs to change because 50% of US counties lack obstetric services, as there is a shortage of OB-GYN care. Something needs to come in to fill that gap. We believe this is going to be part of the solution. We hope to find provider networks, health systems, and payers that also want to innovate in this area.

There are a lot of really unique things about this space in terms of your ability to produce outcomes quickly because it’s pregnancy, you get a result every nine months. We hope to inspire other folks, to start finding our tribe of folks that really care about maternal health and start working together collaboratively because the problems are massive. No one is going to do it on their own. We just hope to find like-minded, values-aligned partners across the spectrum, whether it’s investors, the provider side, the payer side, or other companies working the space.

This interview was recorded at HLTH2019