Launched Thursday by Google’s former Chief Health Strategist Roni Zeiger, Smart Patients is an online community for cancer patients and caregivers that incorporates social networking and search technology.

“Given how many tools are accessible to everyone and how even scientific information is being democratized, there is now an impressive number of smart patients out there [and] we haven’t really thought about how to collaborate with them.,” Zeiger told me at this week’s TEDMED conference. “What can we learn from them to help take care of them and others better?”

While there are other online communities for patients, like PatientsLikeMe, as well as cancer-specific sites, Zeiger said Smart Patients differs in a couple of key ways.  For example, he said, given the important role clinical trials can play in a cancer patient’s treatment, the site includes a patient-friendly clinical trial search engine and it enables them to start conversations about those trials.

Additionally, while most other health-focused social networks and web communities – as well as most things in health care – tend to be siloed by disease, Smart Patients enables patients to follow conversations across their specific cancer and other kinds of cancers. That’s important, Zeiger said, because topics like bone metastasis or certain kinds of drugs may matter to patients with different kinds of cancers.

The free site will not include any advertising or marketing, but the company plans to conduct surveys and share anonymous patient insights with other health care companies, including biopharma companies, Zeiger said. For example, a current project with Oncosec Medical is working with a subset of the community to get patient feedback on how to design upcoming clinical trials of the biotech company’s skin cancer treatments.

Earlier this year, PatientsLikeMe announced that it had received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create an open research platform that enables patients to take part in the clinical research process. But, for the most part, patients don’t play a part in clinical trials until they’re already designed.

For the past three months, Smart Patients has been in private beta with a few hundred patients but, to help build the network, it’s launching Thursday with partners including The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and the non-profit Cancer Commons. While Zeiger said he doesn’t think Smart Patients’ model will fit with every disease, he added that if their approach is successful, they’ll likely expand beyond cancer. He also said that while the company has been self-funded to date, it’s planning to raise a seed round in the near future.

“Our core philosophy is to learn from patients,” Zeiger said. “And I think that’s going to help us build something really useful.”

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At the TEDMED conference Thursday, a few of the industry’s most seasoned entrepreneurs and investors gave emerging startups a dose of advice. Here are a few of their tips:

1. Let your experience inspire, but don’t just build for yourself.

Several of the most interesting startups I’ve encountered were started by people who had their own collision with the health care system or were deeply affected by the experiences of people close to them.  But while personal experiences can inspire powerful solutions, Nina Nashif, founder and CEO of the Chicago-based health startup accelerator HealthBox, advised startups to make sure that they don’t skimp on doing their homework and talk to multiple stakeholders.

“There are a lot of entrepreneurs that may have experienced their own situation or the situation of someone close to them. And they’re developing a solution for that without actually going out and talking to enough people to make sure they’re not solving the need for one institution… and that they’re building something that has the ability to scale,” she said. “You can’t just sit behind your computer and code in health care, you have to be out in the trenches.”

2. Nuance over need.

As with anything, the devil is in the details. Nashif also said that while healthcare has a lot of need and a lot of solutions, the startups with impact are those that figure out exactly where and how to apply their approach.

“It’s important for entrepreneurs to understand the complexities of the industry and that’s not always easy because entrepreneurs and industry aren’t always speaking the same language,” she said. “Entrepreneurs really need to put their solutions in context.”

3. Build to build, not to sell.

Entrepreneur Michael Weintraub has sold or taken public six startups during his career (most recently, his health IT startup Humedica was acquired by UnitedHealth). But his big piece of advice was this: “I think the key to innovation is building something because you really want to build it not because you want to build to sell it.”

But he also said that startups should get to know the top 10 companies that could be potential acquirers years in advance: “There are a lot of people working for you and counting on you to make the right decision. You’re not flipping the business to cash out, [you’re] putting it in a place that has greater leverage and impact potential,” he added.

4. Ask yourself the hard questions.

When it comes to figuring out the future of your company, it’s important to keep your feelings about your “baby” in check and think hard about the reality of the situation, said Castlight CEO and co-founder Giovanni Colella.

“There’s a point in the life of the company [when] the entrepreneur has to ask himself and the management team the hard question: ‘Can we build the company to last or are we better off as a feature of a bigger product?’ You have to be really honest with yourself,” he said. And even before that point, he added, it’s critical to find investors and a management team that will hold you accountable and force you to think.

5. Get some gray hair on your team.

The general perception may be that startups are for hoodie-wearing early twenty-somethings. But in healthcare (and other fields), you’d do well to find some people with deep experience in the industry and some battle scars to show for it.

“As you’re thinking about starting companies, if you’re young, put a little bit of gray hair into your team of people who have failed and people who are not afraid to say I screwed up… and these are some of the lessons learned, said Juan Enriquez, managing director at Excel Ventures and the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project.

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To support its growing emphasis on “transformational health investing,” the firm also said it had hired a new partner Mohit Kaushal, an MD and MBA, who previously led investments at West Health and served as director of connected health at the Federal Communications Commission.

“The old mantra was very much around improved outcomes as a thesis and then premium pricing on top of that, whether it’s a drug or a device. Aberdare came to the conclusion, from a very bottoms up approach, that the world is changing and that this was not a viable thesis any more,” said Kaushal. “The efficiency angle is just way more important these days.”

Given the rising cost of healthcare and the growing elderly population, as well as shifts in the technology and policy landscape, big changes in the way health care is delivered and regulated are on the horizon. While outcomes are still critical, Kaushal says it’s become increasingly important to encourage cost-effective health care systems.

With an investment portfolio that includes wearable electronics startup MC10, online diabetes prevention program Omada Health and health startup accelerator Rock Health, Aberdare is already a leader in the emerging world of digital health. But Kaushal said the firm will focus even more closely on three areas in healthcare: personalized medicine (including diagnostics and genomics), smart sensors and health care IT.

As various reports have shown, venture capital interest in life sciences companies is on the decline. Some firms like Aberdare and Venrock, which historically invested in more traditional pharmaceutical and device companies, were early supporters of startups that bring newer digital technologies to healthcare.  But others have been slower to shift their focus. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the industry shakes out.

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Since launching in 2011, the startup has provided those features through its website, but by bringing them to mobile, Simplee wants to help patients make decisions and negotiate payments at the point of service. “[In most cases], you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time when you get the information,” said John Adractas, Simplee’s CMO. “Mobile… gives you the information when it matters, when you’re standing in the doctor’s office, when you’re making decisions.”

As an example, Evelyn Wang, Simplee’s director of design, said that when she went in for knee surgery earlier this year, the hospital tried to collect payment upfront. But because she could reference her payment history from Simplee’s app, she knew she had already met her deductible and could show the hospital that their information was out-of-date. Ultimately, she said she was able to push back and didn’t over-pay.

Obviously, the app won’t come to the rescue for every patient in such a clear way. But as a Simplee user, I can see the benefits in being able to review and pay my medical bills from my smartphone in the same way I can check my bank balance and make other payments on the go.

Simplee said that its new app would integrate with its SimpleePAY patient and loyalty service, which enables participating health care providers to issue digital bills.  Patients can pay directly via app, as well as earn loyalty rewards for using it.

The company, which has raised nearly $8 million, says its average active user pays an average of $1,200 in medical bills annually and uses the service 15 times a year. Over the past two years, it said its handled nearly $2 billion in medical expenses for its users.

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Already two-thirds of its 17 million users are in more than 200 countries outside the U.S., the company told me Wednesday. But Runkeeper believes that there are many others who would use the app if not for the language barrier.

To date, the company has offered the app in English only, but added Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese. As of today, the changes are live for Android users and the iPhone version is comings soon, Runkeeper said.

Given rising competition among fitness tracking apps and devices — and the foothold the company already has overseas — it’s not surprising that Runkeeper wants to ramp up international outreach.

Runkeeper, which launched in 2008, has a strong user base. But Nike, for example, has said that its Nike+ community (encompassing its app and devices) includes 11 million people and MapMyFitness, another fitness tracking company, said it crossed the 10 million member mark last summer. Nike and MapMyFitness already support other languages.

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The San Francisco-based company, which provides employers with health cost comparison products, said its new pharmacy tool is meant to help users shop for the best prices on their prescriptions. It allows them to search across different variables, including pharmacies, mail-order, generic/brand, quantity and other factors.

According to Consumer Reports, the average American spends $708 out-of-pocket annually on pharmaceuticals, and Castlight says people make drug-related purchases three times as often as they go to the doctor — so savings on pharmacy costs aren’t insignificant. But Ethan Prater, Castlight’s vice president of product, said that while cost savings was a factor, a larger goal of the product is to encourage consumers to be more engaged when it comes to shopping for their health care services and products.

“It’s a stepping stone to broader healthcare consumerism,” he said.

Pharmaceuticals comprise just 15 percent of what employers pay in healthcare costs. But if being mindful about drug costs helps employees become more savvy about general health care costs, the savings could be meaningful to employers and employees.

As health care costs rise and employers shift to high-deductible health plans that require their employees to bear a greater share of health care costs, companies like Castlight are trying to boost transparency and bring a new wave of consumerism to health care. Castlight, which has raised $181 million in venture capital and is believed by many to be the next digital health company to go public, is a leader in this space. But other companies addressing transparency issues in healthcare include ClearCost Health, Clear Health Costs and HealthInReach.

With Castlight’s mobile app, users can search from their doctor’s office to see if a less expensive therapeutic alternative (or drug in the same class) exists for a medication recommended by a doctor. Other savings could come from mail-order sites or pill-splitting, Prater said. While not all employers support the practice of buying larger, possibly cheaper, doses of a medication and then splitting it into the prescribed amount, Prater said that for those that do, Castlight provides the option. The tool also alerts users when it spots opportunities for cost savings.

Castlight, which counts companies like ConAgra as customers, says it works with employers who collectively cover 3.7 million people.

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Nike said the 10 startups, which were culled from “thousands,” kicked off the program today in Portland, Ore. and will focus on building their products on top of the Nike+ and NikeFuel platforms.

During the program, the startups will be mentored by health and tech leaders, including Stefan Olander, Nike’s VP of digital sport; David Cohen, founder and CEO of TechStars; Naveen Selvadurai, co-founder of Foursquare; and quantified-self expert Tim Ferriss. In addition to the mentorship, support and work space, they’ll receive $20,000 each.

Given the rising interest in quantified self-type fitness and health tracking devices and apps (like Nike’s own Fuel band), it’s little wonder that the company spots an opportunity in supporting health startups and encouraging new ideas and applications of its platform.

“We are excited by the response to the Nike+ Accelerator and the high caliber of applicants to the program,” Olander said in a statement. “We recently celebrated the first year of NikeFuel and the Accelerator program is a natural next step to broaden and enhance the Nike+ ecosystem – allowing Nike to offer richer experiences to athletes of all levels.”

Here are the 10 companies:

• FitDeck: Digital decks of exercise playing cards that deliver ever-changing workouts for fitness and sports.
• GoRecess: Helps users find, book and review fitness activities.
• Chroma Games: An indie game studio that creates virtual worlds tied to real-world activity.
• CoachBase: Provides a digital sports coaching platform.
• GoFitCause: Leverages fitness data as a means of raising money for charities.
• HighFive: Ad network for health and fitness apps that helps people achieve their goals by rewarding them along their journey.
• Sprout At Work: Provider of corporate wellness solutions leveraging social and gamification tools to inspire employees and empower employers.
• GeoPalz: An interactive gaming and rewards platform for kids and families.
• Incomparable Things: Creates activity-driven fantasy sports leagues.
• RecBob: Offers a platform that makes recreational sports easy by organizing play.

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But Tictrac has an answer to that in the form of a personal analytics dashboard that it launched in closed beta last year and opened up to the public this week.

The startup integrates with about 50 APIs to enable people to pull in data from apps like Runkeeper, trackers like Fitbit (see disclosure below) and sleep monitoring tools like Sleepio. Once the data is ingested in Tictrac, users can see easier-to-understand visualizations of each data stream as well identify relationships between the different parts of their lives.

“Our focus with Tictrac is around bringing together all lifestyle factors with respect to health,” said CEO and founder Martin Blinder. “What affects you in one aspect of your life will affect you in another.”

Since launching in private beta a year ago, the company has mostly focused on being a consumer web service. But, Blinder said, Tictrac has started working with employers and health and fitness experts to make health tracking more accessible and helpful to those with (or at risk for) chronic conditions. It recently closed a deal with European telecom company Telefonica to support a corporate wellness program and other similar partnerships are likely ahead.

On the site, Tictrac helps users organize their data around “projects” related to goals like losing weight or lifestyle changes like caring for a newborn. This week, the startup rolled out four new projects for asthma, diabetes, chronic bronchitis and blood pressure. Through those projects, health professionals and fitness coaches can tailor programs for their patients and clients and use the site to assess progress.

For example, for a patient at risk for diabetes, a doctor could create a project that outlines activity and nutrition recommendations and then follow the patient’s activity, weight loss, eating habits and more.  Because Tictrac allows users to integrate their calendars, travel schedules, email and other non-health data, a doctor monitoring a patient with asthma could use Tictrac to identify potential lifestyle patterns related to when asthma attacks were triggered.

Other startups and companies are starting to offer more sophisticated and social patient engagement and corporate wellness platforms. And Tictrac isn’t the only company looking to help consumers aggregate their health data to uncover insights. Earlier this month, for example, we reported that WebMD and Qualcomm Life have teamed up to offer a health hub that similarly enables people to sync and analyze data from multiple health tracking tools. But Tictrac (which has only raised an angel round but says it isn’t looking to raise more funding now because it’s earning revenue) is an interesting startup to watch because it makes the data easy to follow, visually compelling and meaningful.

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The overall amount of health tech investment was down in February from the same period last year, but venture capitalists and strategic players in the sector were as active as ever.  Even though funders invested 33 percent less last month than they did the previous year, deal volume nearly doubled. In February of this year, 32 deals closed for a total of $107.95 million invested, compared with 17 deals in February 2012 for $161.51 million.

Here’s a quick snapshot of activity last month:

Key takeaways:

• The uptick in deal volume could be a reflection of the increase in startup accelerators, said Unity Stoakes, Startup Health’s co-founder and president. For example, Medikly, MyFitnessWallet and DocTree InfoServices — all companies that raised funding last month — are graduates of accelerator programs.
• Analytics companies continue to attract the most funding (little surprise here as big data is a hot area in health and outside it). Two of the biggest deals of the month involved data and analytics startups backed by large health systems (Geisinger Health System is behind xG Health Solutions and Health Catalyst received funding from Kaiser Permanente and a venture fund connected to Indiana University Health), highlighting that institutional players are increasingly seeing benefits and opportunities in big data.
• An interesting sub-category attracting a good deal of money and attention in digital health: brain injury sensors and diagnostics. Startup Health points out that in February, startups Brain Sentry and x2 Biosystems, which use sensors attached to helmets or worn elsewhere on the head to monitor head impact, raised funding from investors. In January, MC10, a Cambridge, Mass., startup pioneering wearable sensor technology, and Reebok announced their own head impact indicator. And the NFL and GE also recently announced multi-million dollar initiatives to prevent and treat traumatic brain injury with new technology.
• Just a couple of months into the year, M&A activity in the sector is heating up. In January, Samsung announced that it would purchase medical imaging company Neurologica and UnitedHealth Group acquired digital health company Humedica. On the more consumer-facing front in February, Jawbone bought mobile app maker MassiveHealth and design agency Visere and Practice Fusion snapped up mobile health app 100Plus.

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But, last year, Bryan Sivak, the CTO and entrepreneur-in-residence at the Department of Health and Human Services, was tapped to bring more Silicon Valley spirit to the massive department. (Prior to working in government, he founded a company that was acquired by Oracle). And it looks like his touch is starting to move the agency further along a startup-inspired track.

At the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin on Saturday, Sivak said he’s tried to promote a definition of innovation that gives people the “freedom to experiment.”

“I can teach you how to experiment. I can teach you how to develop a hypothesis. I can teach you how to define some tests that generate some metrics. I can teach you how to analyze those metrics to determine whether or not your test was successful and I can give you the freedom to execute some of these things,” he said. “This is something that’s critical for an entity like the federal government, which is very bureaucratic and structured and all the things we wish it wasn’t in a lot of cases.”

Sivak isn’t the first to bring lean startup theory to HHS. Sivak’s predecessor Todd Park, co-founder of health tech giants Athenahealth and Castlight and current CTO of the United States, drew on his tech chops to start opening up health data and transforming health care. But here a few of the more recent Silicon Valley-style programs at HHS.

Yammer-powered social networking

Getting 90,000 government employees to collaborate is obviously no easy task. But using Yammer, HHS employees across the department now have the opportunity to share ideas and reach out to people up and down the bureaucratic hierarchy through HHSConnect.  Since launching a few months ago, 10,000 of the department’s employees have used the platform with many using it actively, said Sivak.

Open coworking spaces

Like many startup CEOs, Sivak said he believes in the “serendipitous collisions” that happen between coworkers who work in open spaces. But in government cubicles, he said, “the only thing you’re going to collide with is air.”  To up the chances of serendipitous in-person collaboration, the department is creating “HHSLabs” – an open, modular, technologically-tricked out work space open to anyone in the agency.  It’s also opening its doors to health startup CEOs and other private sector visitors to DC who want a temporary place to work.

Internal crowdfunding for resources

To support entrepreneurial-minded people at HHS who come up with interesting ideas but need people with other skills or resources to get their projects off the ground, Sivak said they’ve created an internal crowdfunding-like site where people can solicit support. Called “HHSFairtrade,” people can post descriptions of their ideas and others across the department can commit needed resources or support. Like Kickstarter, the project only activates once it receives all of the commitments it needs to launch.

Seed funding for internal innovators

If it’s a little bit of cash that internal innovators need to test their ideas, Sivak said they can turn to “HHSIgnite.” The program gives department employees small amounts of money to try out new approaches. If the project can show returns in three to six months, he said, it can become a stronger candidate for allocated funds.

Opening the door to outside entrepreneurs

More technologists like Park and Sivak are bringing a startup mindset to the public sector, but Sivak knows that many of the country’s most innovative thinkers don’t live inside the Beltway. To tap into their ideas, he said, the department created “HHS Entrepreneurs,”a new program based on the HHS Innovation Fellows program launched last year. One track invites HHS employees to apply to be “internal entrepreneurs” who will work on special team and get extra networking, mentoring and professional development opportunities. But the other track is open to entrepreneurs around the country who would come to HHS to work with internal entrepreneurs for 6 to 12 months on “high risk, high reward” problems, Sivak said.

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