Imagine going to a barbershop and coming out with a stylish haircut, a COVID-19 vaccine and a new primary care physician!
That’s the concept behind Live Chair Health, a Columbia, Maryland-based organization that supports men’s health by building on the relationships between neighborhood barbers and salons and their clientele.
Live Chair is one of five startups that were part of the inaugural cohort of 1501 Health, an incubator for health care startups developed through a pilot partnership between LifeBridge Health and Healthworx, the innovation and investment arm of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.
“The partnership, which launched last spring, targeted 70 Baltimore area barbers and provided them with education so that they could conduct health risk assessments with clients in the barbershop,” said Pothik Chatterjee, assistant vice president of Innovation at LifeBridge Health. “We conducted 465 health risk assessments and found that an overwhelming number of Live Chair clients did not have a primary care physician. We helped them to get connected to PCPs [primary care physicians], provided COVID-19 support in the forms of PPE [personal protective equipment], screening tools, education and resources and even offered COVID-19 vaccines at the barbershop through our mobile clinic.”
“Our 1501 Health partnership is a joint venture between LifeBridge and CareFirst,” said Chatterjee. “Given the pandemic, we developed the partnership with a strong health equity lens and invested in startups that leverage technology in innovative ways to reach underserved populations and help promote health equity.”
Other startups that are part of 1501 Health’s first cohort include:
• BabyLiveAdvice’s mission is to reduce costly complications and close gaps in maternal and infant care by using tech-enabled professional providers in collaboration with health organizations, employers and insurers to provide remote education, monitoring and support to expectant mothers and new parents;
• Even Health is a mental wellness company and creator of Cabana, the first digital counseling platform offering anonymous group support facilitated by licensed professionals accessible from desktop, smartphone or a virtual reality device;
• Pair Team is the first end-to-end provider enablement solution for Medicaid, providing wraparound technology, care team and EMR-embedded support tools to coordinate patient care and automate value-based care operations;
• Wellset is the premier centralized platform connecting the holistic wellness industry. Find and book thousands of individual and group sessions with specialists in 30+ modalities including acupuncture, health coaching, holistic therapy, aurveyda and more.
The 1501 Health incubator is currently accepting applications for its second cohort of startups through Nov. 16, 2021. The 2022 cohort is set to include five to seven new startups.
LifeBridge’s Innovation Department has also joined forces with higi, a consumer health engagement company that makes health care accessible to consumers by stationing kiosks in convenient locations such as supermarkets, drugstores and other public venues. At the kiosks, shoppers can test their blood pressure and receive information on health-related topics such as wellness and prevention, hypertension and heart health.
Chatterjee has seen firsthand that Higi’s kiosks can save lives.
“In October of 2019, a woman had her blood pressure checked at a kiosk at the Jewish Community Center in Owings Mills and discovered that she had dangerously elevated blood pressure,” said Chatterjee. “Before being checked, she had no idea her blood pressure was high.”
As a result of the onsite testing, “she was in treatment for her heart condition before it took a toll on her health,” said Chatterjee, who explained that the incident at the JCC prompted his department to “expand the partnership to 68 kiosks across the Greater Baltimore region.”
“The mission of Innovation is to use LifeBridge’s community-centric approach and entrepreneurial culture to help foster and accelerate innovation across the health care system,” Chatterjee said. “It serves as an entry point for ideas coming from within our system and engages with external partners to test and invent new models and systems for technology.”
For more on 1501 Health, visit 1501health.com.
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