Capturing and Sharing Life Stories in Healthcare

Published in

StartUp Health

5 min readDec 14, 2016

Health Transformer Beth Sanders, founder and CEO of LifeBio, chats with StartUp Health co-founder & President, Unity Stoakes, about how LifeBio is helping people capture and share their stories in healthcare and dispenses a few words of inspiration to motivate other entrepreneurs.

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GUEST: Beth Sanders, LifeBio

HOST: Unity Stoakes, StartUp Health

LOCATION: Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit, Cleveland, OH

IN THIS EPISODE:

The Mission of LifeBio
How LifeBio Fits into Practice Management
Columbus, Ohio: A Great Place for a Startup

Show Notes and Key Takeaways (Access the full transcript here.)

The Mission of LifeBio

[01:08] Beth: LifeBio is capturing life stories in healthcare. We want to be sure every person has a chance to share their story. It helps them to share their story, it helps clinicians to deeply know them. Helps the family know their loved one too. So, we’re capturing life stories in healthcare.

How LifeBio Fits into Practice Management

[01:47] Beth: In the EMR there’s usually this field where a little bio or profile could be. But most of the time it’s empty. Really, clinicians operate without data in that field a lot, they know the physical health issues and the the stats on this person, but they, they may have no real background on that person. You know, where they’ve been in their life. So, tell me about your hometown, you know. Where did you grow up? Were you in the military? What was your military service like? A background on their work experience. Where they went to school. Now, all these things have colored this person’s life and we have people operating in health care system without the background story, and when they don’t have that, they lose the ability to have a really strong relationship with that person.
[02:52] Beth: You’re going to get better outcomes if you know them more holistically. We think that the movement is to body, mind and spirit. Body is important, but mind and spirit really matter too.

Biggest Challenges as an Entrepreneur

[04:57] Beth: Well, I think the biggest challenge that we faced is, it’s a little tough when you’ve got a new idea. Something that hasn’t been done in this wide scale way in this area of life stories and healthcare, right? So, we have some barriers to overcome where people go, “Oh, wow. You know, why why didn’t we think of that, right? We should do that.” Another barrier is, like, we’ve had angel funding, but we haven’t, maybe, had as much outside funding as we wished for.
[05:32] Beth: Yes. So, we’ve learned to be very good at bootstrapping, you know? Whenever we need to we can operate very effectively and efficiently. So a lesson learned is don’t wait for the outside money you think is going to come right around the corner, because it could take awhile and in the meantime whatever resources you have go forward, right?

Columbus, Ohio: A Great Place for a Startup

[06:35] Beth: I think the pros are that we have an incredibly talented workforce and we can have these resources for less then we would be able to get them in other cities, ok? So it’s an affordable place to live and work.
[06:56] Beth: With great talent. Very strong talent. You know, we’ve got the Ohio State University, we’ve got, you know, a million and a half people in the Columbus area. Very high tech area. Top 10 tech city in the U.S. So I can see why, you know, the East and West Coasts are really strong too, but I, you know, I have very affordable rent, very affordable people.

Beth’s Advice to Other Entrepreneurs

[07:38] Beth: You’re gonna need a lot of strength to make it through the tough stuff. I, don’t know where you’re going to pull that from but you’ve gotta just completely believe in your idea and go for it, and there’s a reason you’ve done it and you’ve got to keep that in mind and not let anybody tell you that it’s not gonna work. I mean, it’s that, you’re gonna hear that all the time.
[08:01] Unity: Where do you pull your strength from?
[08:03] Beth: Well, you know, I could say LifeBio operates on a wing and a prayer. You know, what? Prayer is ok. You know, if you have an idea and you want, you know, the grand scheme of things is you want to, you know, you got to tell people what you want, put it out there, keep that vision alive, and then find incredible people. I have just an incredible staff that completely believes in LifeBio, too. So, building an important team that is committed to that idea, sees the vision. In our case, millions of people who would never have told their story are going to tell their story with LifeBio. How cool is that?

Staying Healthy

[08:56] Beth: Well, I love to do tabata hiit in my kitchen. So, if I can’t, you know, it’s late at night, I work too late, now I’m doing tabata in the kitchen or I’m biking on the weekend. I love to bike. Long-distance endurance ride bike. Buy one of those bikes. If you bike 20, 30, 50 miles you’ll forget. And that, I mean, that’s another tip. Just gotta let it go on the weekends or whenever. You can’t always be working, because you’re really not fresh.
[09:29] Unity: We say that to everyone of our Health Transformers. Take the weekend off as much as you can, because you need to rejuvenate and come back fresh to be able to to survive the journey and accelerate through the journey.
[09:41] Beth: For sure, yes. And take care of your family. They need you and don’t cheat yourself out of the relationships with your family, either. Because, it’s hard on all of you and they need you, your focus and don’t cheat them and don’t cheat yourself out of those relationships.

Resources, Websites and Tools Mentioned:

[00:04] StartUp Health NOW
[00:04] StartUp Health NOW!
[00:04] LifeBio
[01:47] EHR (Electronic Health Records)
[03:21] UnitedHealthcar
[03:21] VITAS
[06:10] Steve Case
[06:56] Ohio State University
[08:56] Tabata and Hiit Trainin
[09:29] StartUp Health Health Transformer

Related and Recommended StartUp Health NOW! Episodes:

Capturing and Sharing Life Stories in Healthcare

Written by StartUp Health