J&J and Village Capital Award Omaiven for Accelerating Culturally Competent Care

Omaiven Health and Lucia Health Guidelines Peer-Selected for Investments During Village Capital’s Building A Culturally Competent Healthcare System Accelerator Program

Each startup will receive $100,000 in grant funding from Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures

Washington, DC [September 1, 2021] — Village Capital, in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, an impact investment vehicle of Johnson & Johnson Foundation, today announced that Omaiven Health and Lucia Health Guidelines were peer-selected to receive investment as a part of Building A Culturally Competent Healthcare System, an accelerator program for tech-enabled startups focused on providing culturally competent care to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), low-income, or other underserved communities.

“The pandemic has shed light on the stark reality that the US healthcare system is still plagued with inequity, making culturally competent care absolutely necessary as we innovate in healthcare,” said Matt Zieger, Chief Program Officer-Americas at Village Capital. “We are thrilled to support companies like Omaiven Health and Lucia Health Guidelines that are creating tangible solutions that directly advance health equity." 

Omaiven Health and Lucia Health Guidelines were selected for investment by a group of peer entrepreneurs on the final day of Building A Culturally Competent Healthcare System, a four week long accelerator program managed by Village Capital in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures. The ten entrepreneurs in the program evaluated each other through an investor lens, using eight specific investment criteria that leverage Village Capital’s Abaca Pathway. Omaiven Health and Lucia Health Guidelines were ranked “most investment ready.” The two companies are focused on the following:

• Omaiven Health (Austin, Texas) is healthcare automation that strives to work for everyone.
• Lucia Health Guidelines (San Francisco, California) is an AI-based clinical decision support tool that provides diagnosis and guideline treatment for atrial fibrillation (AFib) at the point of care.

The remaining companies in the Building A Culturally Competent Healthcare System cohort were:

• Ayana Therapy (Los Angeles, California) is a mental health startup focused on removing stigmas related to marginalized communities accessing care by matching clients with providers who fit their values such as, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and gender.
• Grapevine Health (Washington, D.C.) is a digital health company focused on educating and engaging underserved communities through relatable, culturally-appropriate, data informed video content.
• K'ept Health (Washington, D.C.) is an integrative AI and telemedicine service providing personalized dermatologic care based on melanin levels, health, and environmental factors.
• knowRX® (Austin, Texas) helps optimize clinical recruitment for drug development.
• Patient Orator (Dutchess County, New York) is a digital health platform seeking to improve patient-provider communication by bridging care coordination and communication gaps for underserved communities and providers.
• Radical Health (Bronx, New York) works to make it easier for people to come together, ask questions, and know what questions to ask to ensure you’re taken care of.
• TQIntelligence's (Atlanta, Georgia) Clarity AI is a talk therapy software that extracts voice biomarkers to measure the emotional distress of at-risk youth to improve treatment outcomes.
• Viora Health (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) aims to reduce disease progression and associated healthcare costs using a personalized solution to engage underserved populations at home by addressing social and behavioral barriers to health.

For more information, contact Rustin Finkler at Village Capital (rustin.finkler@vilcap.com). 

About Village Capital

Village Capital helps entrepreneurs bring big ideas from vision to scale. Our mission is to reinvent the system to back the entrepreneurs of the future. Our vision is a future where business creates equity and long-term prosperity. Since 2009, we have supported more than 1,000 early-stage entrepreneurs through our investment readiness programs. Our affiliated fund, VilCap Investments, has invested in more than 100 program graduates.

Source: https://newsandviews.vilcap.com/press-releases/jnj-culturally-competent-healthcare-omaiven-luciahealth