CTV Health Equity

Across all broadcast, cable and emerging OTT “streaming” networks there are zero “0” health & wellness channels speaking to 300+ million Americans. This lack of “accessible, trusted and culturally-responsive health informational-media has resulted in a majority of Americans having some of the poorest personal health statistics and health outcomes for an industrialized nation. For example, the US spends the largest percentage of its annual GDP on healthcare (18.6%) which translates into approximately $4.3T yearly in healthcare GDP. Roughly 33% or $1.3T is lost year-over-year in combined poor health literacy $600B, $300 billion in direct health disparities, and $270 billion poor therapeutic compliance-adherence (e.g., unfilled prescriptions). Many of these inequalities manifests whereby there are 6 million kids with poorly-treated asthma, 42% of Americans are clinically obese, there is only 1 mental health expert for every 350 persons seeking mental health services, and only 10% of all minorities are enrolled in FDA-mandated diverse clinical trials.

We will solve this lack of accessible, trusted and culturally-competent health information-media by designing and launching an OTT/CTV Health & Medicine network superserving minority, marginalized and proactive health consumers. Our streaming platform will be featured across popular Roku, Amazon Fire-TV, Apple TV, Samsung, LG and Vizio Smart TVs and our Smart Speaker channels across Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple-Home, Pandora, Spotify and iHeart radio. Consumers simply download and subscribe to our InnerCityMD/HELEN channels on their consumer devices and begin watching or listening to our programming. Consumers will be able to view a thumbnail of the medical experts appearing in our programming and click on a QR code to schedule a telemedicine consult. Consumers will be able to schedule 4 quarterly telemedicine visits with a monthly subscription fee.

CTV Health Equity Lifestyle Engagement Network ‘HELEN’ primarily services at-risk minority, marginalized and proactive health consumers who watch over 185 billion hours of streaming content across 215 million-plus Smart-TVs. HELEN will impact lives by offering access to clinical and community key opinion leaders across 50-plus medical, healthcare and social determinants of health specialties. For example, over 6 million kids have poorly treated asthma. Minority kids with asthma have 5x the rate of missed days at school, urgent care and emergency room visits, hospital admissions, and unfortunate death from a very treatable disease. Many of these kids are treated with 2-3+ overlapping and expensive therapeutics. HELEN will stream content that engages and educates families on how to recognize the signs & symptoms of early and progressively worsening asthma, how to find local and regional medical experts across asthma-allergy and pediatric pulmonary medicine, and also how to find affordable and easy to use asthma therapeutic solutions (e.g., Once daily pills, breathing spacers, MDH inhalers, and Epi-Pens).

InnerCityMD is a Black founder-led, vertically integrated digital health media, generative data, and telemedicine services agency. Our core team are veteran clinicians, public & population health, patient advocacy, digital creative & storytelling experts. Our medical advisory boards are affiliated academically with HBCU (MD, PharmD, DDS, MPH, Nursing, etc.) colleges and via professional societies across Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian Pacific-Islander communities. Our founder, many of our C-Suite and medical advisory board hail from several dozen urban cities and marginal neighborhoods. We have met virtually monthly over the past 18 months to discuss content, advertising, and telemedicine strategy surrounding health disparities, adverse social determinants of health, and forward-looking health equity.

I selected Pilot Stage because in 2017, I bootstrapped and successfully launched my prototype smart TV app titled, InnerCityMD. See attached. The app ran across Roku-TV, Amazon Fire-TV and Apple-TV for 14 months before I had to shut it down owing to limited continued personal funds. Limiting my further growth was the fact that InnerCityMD was too early in the commercial adoption of OTT streaming and cord-cutting from majority consumer broadcast TV. Additionally OTT was still not on the radar of mainstream advertisers which I had pitched, nor venture capitalists. Consider what happened just 24 months later with a worldwide Pandemic. Everyone was quarantined at home streaming TV to the tune of 100+ billion hours monthly, and "everyone" was affixed to TV news for critical public health & medical information on how to stay healthy and not contract Covid-19. InnerCityMD was literally 2.5 years too early. I am relaunching InnerCityMD nearly 7 years from my prototype into a fully mature consumer-advertising-technology streaming ecosystem (e.g., The Streaming Wars). I am launching CTV Health Equity having been confirmed during the Pandemic that health & medicine information streamed into 100's of millions of households across continents is the most efficacious communication channel for disseminating critical preventative, acute, chronic and therapeutic health information.

This is our second application to Solve since 2022. We are applying to Solve along with a half dozen other accelerator programs such as Techstars and Y-Combinator, several foundations such as W.K. Kellogg, a SBA loan, and developing a strategy for a 506(c) crowdfunding campaign because we recognize that on average over the past decade, less than 1.9% of venture funding (~$300 billion) is invested in diverse-founders. Minority founders are typically forced to string together smaller equity-expensive pre-seed, seed and accelerator funding options. Thus, applying to Solve is part of my overall fundraising strategy to get started.

Via SWOT analysis, InnerCityMD/Helen/CTV Health Equity is a first mover.

Reiterating there are zero broadcast, cable and streaming media services distributing consumer health content to minority, marginalized and proactive health consumers.  InnerCityMD will make an immediate impact with the first widely available and accessible smart TV app bringing hard-to-find health experts into the US living room.

We are seeking to reduce preventable chronic conditions  on a year-over-year basis.  We are also seeking to increase the number of at-risk and proactive health consumers who screen for acute and chronic conditions and who thoughtfully manage their therapeutic regimens are recommended by their practitioners.

Consumer streaming technology (e.g., Roku Fire-TV, Apple TV, Samsung Tizen, Alexa, Pandora, Spotify and iHeart)

Currently we have 1 FTE (Founder) and 12 (1099) contract staff who will transition to FTEs and PTEs once funding is secured.

Approximately 8 years.

Our team are diverse in across race & ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and include members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Our business model is a B2B,B2C and C2C digital health media venture. We stream DTC health programming via the Point of Care, Mobile (On-the-Go), and At-Home via OTT and Connected TVs and Speakers.  In Phase II late 2025, Our streaming service will launch its subscription video on demand + telemedicine service allowing viewers to connect with medical experts appearing across our video networks.

We are currently raising capital and will be sustainable via fa combination of Friends & Family, grant funding, SBA loans, start up accelerators, 506c crowdfunding and an eventual priced round.  We are also pitching new business and in final contract to sell our health equity solution priced at $2.5M per year over a 3 year contract to a singular partner-customer.  This partner-customer will be our calling card to additional target partner-customers.