Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson  (@edyson) is executive founder of The Way to Wellville (@WaytoWellville), an open-source, evidence-generating nonprofit project devoted to defining and testing models for producing community health (not health care) that will return profits to investors and health to the participants. HICCup is working with the five Way to Wellville communities to accelerate their own efforts to produce health; they are Lake County, CA; North Hartford, CT; Muskegon County, MI; Clatsop County, OR; Spartanburg, SC.

Wellville’s motto is “Don’t rent your health. Invest in it!”  The 10-year project’s long-term goal is to spur the development of health as a new asset class that investors can invest in, much as they might invest in portfolios of mortgages.  Yes, there are a few complications – including fragmentation across time and payers/beneficiaries.

Aside from Wellville, Dyson spends her time nurturing start-ups as an angel investor, with a recent focus on health care and aerospace.  On the health side, she is an investor in 23andMe (also a director), Applied Proteomics, Care.coach,  Clover Health, Eligible,  Enso Relief, GoQii, Health Loop, HealthTap, i2Dx, Medesk, mEquilibrium, Nuna, Omada Health, PatientsLikeMe, PatientsKnowBest (UK), Prognos, Resilient, Big Health (UK), StartupHealth, Tocagen, Valkee (Finland), Vital Score and Wellpass (also a director).

From October 2008 to March of 2009, she lived in Star City outside Moscow, Russia, training as a backup cosmonaut.