Jerry Levin's Latest Gig Is Startup Health, Kind Of Like A Startup America For Healthcare

Former Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin is dipping his toes in the startup world. He thinks there should be more healthcare entrepreneurs, and so he is becoming the chairman of Startup Health, a project aimed at fostering a better community for health startups by helping them raise capital, offering longterm mentorship, and bringing other resources to bear. Startup Health is a partnership between OrganizedWisdom (a startup where Levin is also the chairman) and the U.S. Department of Health And Human Services, which is opening up government data to entrepreneurs and developers.

Startup Health is also partnering with Startup America, Steve Case’s new organization. It will be just like old times. Startup Health and Startup America will organize some roundtables together, but Startup Health is a private effort through and through. “When you look around,” Levin tells me, “all the entrepreneurial talent is going into certain sectors like the retail space. There is not a lot going towards health and wellness.”

The impetus behind the project is the lack of significant activity in the health and wellness sectors by startups. He wants to change that and “energize entrepreneurial talent” in the sector. “The disruptive locomotive of the net, which has disassembled every media business we know of, hasn’t taken over health or wellness.” But now with open APIs to government data and the importance of mobile phones, all that is set to change. At least, that’s what Levin thinks. I hope he’s right this time.
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