Meet The Able Channel, the Streaming Service Designed to Make People Healthier
These founders believe that when it comes to engaging people with their health, entertaining and clinically-sound streaming content could be just what the doctor ordered.
The Challenge
150 million Americans have chronic health challenges of one type or another. Yet when a patient is given a hard diagnosis, like cancer, diabetes, or Parkinson’s disease, the doctor often only has a few precious minutes to explain the situation, walk through any new medications and paint a picture of what life will look like in this new reality.
Often these visits can be traumatic encounters, after which dazed patients and their families have to do their best to navigate an altered life. Many people quickly turn to online resources only to be confronted with worst-case scenarios and outright misinformation. Or, as they leave the hospital, they’re handed a brochure that may never be read.
Patient trust in information and compliance are some of the most broad-reaching pain points in all of healthcare. Literally hundreds of millions of people — in the United States alone — are struggling under the confusion, stress, and uncertainty of this healthcare challenge. Even if medical care is being delivered well at a top institution, the biggest questions — like what it means to thrive in this new normal — are often left unanswered.
Origin Story
For years, Brian McCourt lived by the principle — often attributed to Walt Disney — that you have to entertain before you can educate. He did this in marketing and in television advertising, helping biotech and pharmaceutical companies tell their stories. His work took him to WGBH in Boston, where he won an Emmy, and then into independent filmmaking. Along the way, McCourt kept his finger on the pulse of new technology. During the first wave of the internet, he was an early adopter and helped biotech and pharmaceutical companies bring content online for the first time. But it wasn’t until “life” began to catch up with him that McCourt realized what all of his content and tech experience was building towards.
In the midst of a successful career, McCourt discovered that his young son had autism. He was completely overwhelmed. Soon after, his mother got diagnosed with Alzheimer's and then a close friend found out he had cancer. With each new revelation, he faced a wave of desperation, the sense of a fleeting time clock, and the exhaustion of caregiving.
Learning how to be a father of a son with a disability and care for family and friends as they lived with disease and ultimately passed away, gave Brian a new level of compassion. But it also helped him understand the role of effective medical communication and the presence of a massive gap in the healthcare industry. What if compelling, accurate storytelling could be given to someone in their moment of need to help not only educate them on the tough road ahead, but uplift and inspire? After all, as McCourt found with his son, even the hardest diagnosis can be a gateway to a new and beautiful life.
“Before it happened, I didn’t even think I was the kind of person who could handle a child with a disability,” says McCourt. “Now, I know it’s a gift. It’s changed me forever.” This new life, he learned, with all its challenges and pain and joy, was chock full of stories worth sharing.
The spark of an idea — that well-made healthcare video content could be used to meaningfully assist the hundreds of millions of people facing chronic diseases or disabilities — caught fire when McCourt and his long-time collaborator Paul Goggin took a deeper look at the streaming video market. Consumer habits and appetites for online content seemed perfectly poised to embrace high impact specialty content designed to improve health.
Under the Hood
When Brian McCourt teamed up with Paul Goggin to build The Able Channel, the elevator pitch was simple — think Netflix for healthcare. Current content categories include Wellness, Aging, The Brain, Cancer, Chronic Disease, Disability, and Mental Health. There’s a series on people living with disabilities, a cooking show that highlights disease-specific diets, and a docu-series called “Surviving Suicide.” There are health news programs and doctor round tables. More original programs are being released every month.
Given the long history of success of healthcare-related television shows from M.A.S.H. to ER, General Hospital to Grey’s Anatomy, there is proven interest in stories of the human spirit with health and healthcare at the center. But from day one, McCourt and his team were thinking beyond entertainment content to an innovative business model that puts patients and doctors in the driver’s seat. They’d create original, credible healthcare-specific content that doctors could prescribe.
“If we were just to launch some business-to-consumer channel,” says McCourt, “we’d spend all this money on marketing and awareness building. But we’re in service to both patients and doctors. We even put it in our charter that the company must act in the public’s best interest. It has to move the needle. That means our content is there to educate, inform and inspire people towards better health.” Able’s “digital prescription” helps both doctor and patient understand what they have, and how they are going to address it together.
The Able Channel’s business model is unique in that they’re starting by partnering directly with hospital systems and insurors. These are groups with huge built-in customer bases who have traditionally struggled with the “last mile” of healthcare communication. McCourt’s vision is that a partner, like the Cleveland Clinic, would collaborate with The Able Channel on disease-specific content, and then can “prescribe” the appropriate video series to patients after the doctor has given a diagnosis. That “digital prescription” helps both doctor and patient understand how they are going to address the issue together.
So, if you take a diabetes patient as an example, the dazed, newly diagnosed patient and family is sent home to watch an entertaining and engaging TV series that’s been vetted by clinicians. The content is not only designed to educate, but uplift and inspire.
“By watching these programs, patients and families learn more about their diagnosis, who else has what they have, what the journey looks like, and what’s next on the horizon that’s going to improve their life,” says McCourt.
Why We’re Proud to Invest
At StartUp Health we’ve always said that storytelling is a critical component to health innovation. Unless we communicate in clear, empathetic, compelling ways, we won’t understand where we’ve been, where we’re going, and why it all matters. Behind every health moonshot are real people. Yes, data is essential to improving health, but so is understanding the stories of those being afflicted.
The Able Channel team understands this core concept, and they learned it the hard way. The company was born out of personal trial and an intimate need, giving it the kind of foundation that can withstand the rockiness of startup life. At The Able Channel, telling stories that can heal is a passion, and it’s a mission its founders are committed to long term.
It’s also an incredible business opportunity. When Disney took control of Hulu in 2019, it pegged the value of the streaming service at $27.5B. At the time, Hulu had 25 million users. This increase in the value of streaming audiences runs in parallel with the exponential acceleration in virtual health adoption brought on by COVID-19. This opens the door for future integration between The Able Channel and virtual care, managed care, and digital care applications.
Finally, because we know that a mission of this magnitude can’t be accomplished alone, we’re excited to see The Able Channel team surrounding themselves with an all-star board and list of advisors. Executives from the Cleveland Clinic, MGM, and The Disney Channel are just a few on the list, helping ensure that The Able Channel will have strong partners for growth. First up? National Broadcast on ABC Disney to distribute an original program called We Are Able, about diversity, equity, and inclusion as seen through the extraordinary lives of people thriving with disabilities.
“Able Channel is where streaming media meets medicine,” says McCourt. “We are differentiated and disruptive to healthcare and we are committed to improving both clinical and business outcomes for patients and partners. Our goal is to make the world healthier one person and one story at a time.”
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