By ERIN DIETSCHE | Nov 26, 2017
Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Carrot Health was founded around a simple question: Since companies like Target are so sophisticated in understanding their customers, why isn’t the healthcare sector moving in the same direction?
In 2014, the startup’s four founders — Kurt Waltenbaugh, Won Gabriel Chung, Steve Sigmond and Derek Rucker — got together to find an answer, and Carrot Health was born.
The company seeks to bring together the worlds of consumer data and healthcare data to provide a solution that allows companies to drive revenue growth.
Its offering, Carrot MarketView, is made up of three parts.
The first layer is comprised of consumers’ social and behavioral data. The second layer encompasses data analytics and predictive models, which forecast health and cost outcomes using consumer data. The topmost layer includes interactive dashboards and visualizations that enable the startup’s customers to better understand emerging trends.
Carrot Health’s solution can aid both the payer and provider markets.
“What payers get from MarketView is a lot better and actionable insights and reporting about what’s happening in their covered populations,” Sigmond said in a phone interview. “They also can get insights on the sales and marketing side about how [they’re] doing competitively.”
These capabilities enable health insurers to make more informed business decisions and ultimately drive revenue growth.
From the provider perspective, Carrot Health’s model can assist in two categories. In the fee-for-service realm, it can help providers identify opportunities for patient growth. Under a value-based model, it can aid providers in being more effective with their population health programs and outreach.
Sigmond added that the company wants to make the deployment and utilization of the solution as easy as possible for its clients.
“We’re flexible,” he said. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all product. Every customer is different.”
The privately funded startup relies on a software-as-a-service business model and has subscription-based pricing for clients.
Internal workings aside, Carrot Health has a unique story around its name. As Sigmond explained, the name has a double meaning. On the one hand, a carrot is a vegetable and connotes healthy living. Additionally, there’s the notion of the carrot and stick. Rather than assuming a certain incentive will work for every patient, Carrot Health takes the approach that each consumer is different and distinctly incentivized.
“We can find the right incentives for the right consumer to make them healthier and change their behavior,” Sigmond said.
In October, Carrot Health was dubbed the winner of the Pitch Perfect contest at the MedCity INVEST Twin Cities conference. Andrew Danielsen (vice chair of Mayo Clinic Ventures), Jodi Hubler (managing director of Lemhi Ventures) and Taha Jangda (a partner at HealthX Ventures) served as judges of the competition, which was focused on innovation in digital health.
Photo: rimglow, Getty Images
