Rock Boston Startup Profile: ZeroSum Health

By Malay Gandhi

Henry Li of ZeroSum Health, Teri Condon from IMS Health, and Michael Lin and Joe Abrahamson, both of ZeroSum Health, look on as Ralph Passarella of ZeroSum Health delivers a pitch (from left)

Today is the first in a series of profiles of Rock Boston’s summer startups. With us today is the crack team from ZeroSum Health, all of whom joined us here in Boston from Johns Hopkins University Medical and Graduate Schools. The team includes Ralph Passarella, Michael Lin, Joe Abrahamson and Henry Li.

What big health care problem are you solving?

Despite major advancements in mobile technology over the last decade, there’s still a chasm between mobile technology developers and the clinical experts who know best how to use mobile technology to solve problems. We are making it unbelievably easy for any clinician or researcher to design and implement mHealth interventions.

Have you been able to use the local clinical expertise supporting Rock Boston?

Absolutely. For example, we recently met with Dr. Stan Shaw, M.D., Ph.D., a founding faculty member of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Systems Biology. He has helped us understand how medicine’s knowledge of the human phenotype will continue to complement our expanding knowledge of the genotype and how that could affect our company in the future.

What has been the best part of being in Boston?

At Harvard we’ve been exposed to unique perspectives from patients and physicians relative to our time at Hopkins and in Baltimore. Hearing new perspectives from stakeholders throughout the Harvard system has helped us better abstract the problems we’re addressing with our technology and our business model.

What music are you currently hacking/coding to?
Foster the People, Jack White, The Alabama Shakes, TuNe-yArDs, Neil Diamond, Miike Snow and Kishi Bashi are currently on rotation across the team.