The opioid crisis continues to impact millions of people globally, including those in the U.S.:

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• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data found deaths involving synthetic opioids rose to nearly 74,000 in 2022, almost tripling over a 10-year period.
• Americans lost an estimated 3.1 million years of life (roughly 38 years per death), due to opioid-related deaths in 2022. That's an increase from 2 million years lost in 2019, per data from the CDC WONDER database.
• Nearly one in three (32%) American adults know someone who has died from drug overdose, including many due to opioid addiction, a study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found.

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Eshelman Innovation, based out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and their partners at Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) the UNC Collaboratory and the UNC Pharmacy Foundation have worked together with High Alpha Innovation to launch our first company focused on addressing the opioid epidemic. 

Goldie Health equips community health workers — post-overdose response teams (PORTs), EMS, and case managers — with a purpose-built, interoperable platform that seamlessly connects disparate systems and stakeholders.

This unprecedented coordination of care transforms the management of opioid and other behavioral health cases.

In short, Goldie Health brings together the right care at exactly the right time, leading to better outcomes and ultimately saving lives.

We spoke with Goldie Health CEO Chris Martin to discover what made him want to lead the socially conscious company, learn about his experience in building and growing similar SaaS startups, and hear about his personal ties to the opioid crisis that affected his outlook.

HAI: You've helped scale several small and large companies over the past two decades. What factors do you consider when deciding to join a startup as an executive?

Chris: To be honest, this has evolved over time.

Early in my career, I was more focused on gaining as much experience as I could.

As my career progressed, I found myself gravitating toward companies focused on solving problems that I was personally passionate about, such as behavioral health.

‍HAI: You most recently led software companies with business models tied to behavioral health and substance abuse. Why are these areas of importance to you?‍

Chris: These are two areas that have most impacted my family.

My mother suffered from addiction when I was a child, and it dramatically impacted our family. Thankfully, she was one of the lucky ones and has been sober for many years now. My brother was unfortunately not as lucky.

After struggling with substance abuse, he eventually succumbed to addiction.

These two events ravaged our family, and have fueled a burning desire in me to affect change in this space.

HAI: We know EMS intersect with those suffering from opioid overdose. What do their technologies enable today? And how can Goldie Health fit into this intersection? 

‍Chris: I have mixed feelings.

I was a leader in a company in this space and the EMS industry has come lightyears from where it was 20 years ago, which was an era of unstructured data mostly compiled on paper run sheets. In 2003, the industry thankfully decided to standardize, and the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) dataset was born.

Over the last couple decades, almost 100% of EMS agencies have adopted NEMSIS. This data is eventually aggregated at a state level, and then national level, which provides a wealth of insights (albeit after the fact).

There is still a fairly big disconnect in most areas between prehospital and hospital systems, which is partially driven by different datasets — for instance, NEMSIS versus Health Level 7 (HL7) — and partially due to lack of health information exchanges being utilized, especially between the two different datasets.

‍Goldie Health will eliminate these silos by pulling in data from both the prehospital and hospital systems, and using the data proactively to provide care to overdose victims which.

We wholeheartedly expect this to be a game-changer in the fight against the opioid crisis.

HAI: We've seen a rise in the number of PORTs specifically created to better care for individuals affected by the opioid crisis. How will Goldie Health help them in their day-to-day?‍

Chris: Goldie Health’s platform will do a few things that currently don’t exist for PORTs today.

First, it will pull in referrals from various sources, which will result in up to three times as many patients being identified for interventions. That can go a long way in providing more immediate care within the “Golden Window” for treatment.

Second, it will be the only platform purpose-built from the ground up specifically for PORT teams, allowing them to no longer shoehorn off-the-shelf CRMs into their operations.

Third, and critically important, it will incorporate post-overdose response best practices across the country.

HAI: Explain what it's been like to work with Eshelman Innovation and High Alpha Innovation on bringing Goldie Health to market and making a positive societal impact.

Chris: Working with Eshelman Innovation, their venture studio, and High Alpha Innovation has been a dream.

Instead of a traditional venture capital approach, Eshelman Innovation and High Alpha Innovation spend a tremendous amount of time vetting numerous potential solutions for real-world challenges.

Both dedicate an entire team of resources at the startup's inception and help guide the founders to ensure success. They’ve essentially created a repeatable recipe to launch successful companies that are solving societal challenges.

This is an extremely exciting scenario for a founder like me.

I’m able to come onboard to a company that already has a product with a validated customer demand and a business with much of the block-and-tackling already taken care of for me.