Kermit: Now Member of an Elite Startup Group

Kermit, makers of a unique digital platform, is announcing that it has been selected to participate in Dreamit Health, a global business accelerator.

According to the March 24, 2016 news release, “Kermit was selected for Dreamit’s inaugural 2016 cycle from an applicant pool of nearly 1, 000 companies from over 40 countries based on metrics including the strength of the team, uniqueness of insights into the problems they are solving, and their capacity to revolutionize the industries in which they operate: healthcare and education.”

“…Through the Kermit approach, more than $10 million in annual savings were realized between three hospitals during 2015. The team, comprised of supply chain experts and former medical device representatives, now find themselves at the helm of a healthcare technology company.”

Richard Palarea, Kermit’s CEO, told OTW, “Dreamit has evolved quite a bit as a digital health accelerator under their new management team. They have taken a long-value view on their cohort in bypassing the standard accelerator approach of making a token investment in exchange for equity. We have only been involved directly for one week and the access we have to hospitals like Penn Medicine and Jefferson University Health and access to the payor market with Independence Blue Cross have been transformative. Dreamit execs and advisors will shepherd us through a formative growth time in our organization. We have clients and early success, but we’re here with eyes and ears wide open to learn as much as we can in a short period of time.”

Asked what unusually good qualifications his team has, he commented to OTW, “True cost reduction and sustainable spend management can’t be achieved in today’s orthopedic service line merely at the supply chain level. It requires collaboration between surgeons, supply chain and executives. Our team took two decades of insights as Zimmer reps and poured that knowledge into Kermit. Further, we have two decades of successful negotiation and spend management experience. The pairing of these disciplines has provided us with a highly effective approach to reduce costs and improve quality for hospitals—all distributed through our platform without having to fly consultants all over the country.”

“We just returned from a three-day retreat in Milford, Pennsylvania, where Dreamit hosted us at a dude ranch. We heard directly from successful entrepreneurs, investors and, especially, C-level executives from health systems and payors. They helped us understand where to quickly hone the value and how buying decisions are made. Zimmer Biomet is also a partner to this Dreamit health cycle and we had a wonderful opportunity to meet key executives and deliver our value proposition.”

“Beyond the investment we hope to secure at the end of the program, we witnessed a community; a family. Dreamit alumni companies were at the retreat and Dreamit has created a strong commitment to founders helping founders. There have been some great success stories out of the early Dreamit groups running multi-million dollar per year businesses and even these founders are still involved in the community. I look forward to being a part of that.”