DURHAM – More than 4 in 10 Americans have more than two chronic conditions, according to the Rand Corporation, and Durham-based startup ZealCare aims to help them with personalized health care delivery. It has a new influx of cash – $120,000 – to help.

The company, spun out of Duke University in the fall of 2020, has been operating in stealth mode and plans to officially emerge soon, said Maureen O’Connor, president and CEO, in an interview with WRAL TechWire.

ZealCare was co-founded by Ralph Snyderman, M.D., formerly CEO of Duke University Health System, and Connor Drake, who served as the research program leader at the Duke Center for Research on Personalized Health Care, of which Synyderman is the executive director.

Ralph Snyderman (Duke University photo)

The $120,000 already raised is the first tranche of a friends and family round that could close, fully subscribed, at $1 million, said O’Connor, noting in an interview that the company already has additional verbal commitments to the round.

According to O’Connor, Snyderman and Drake have been researching and working for years on how to create a more personalized experience for consumers as they navigate the health care systems in the United States.  In September, the company, ZealCare, was spun out of this research, and the technology the company uses was licensed in October.

ZealCare aims to provide new models of care, said O’Connor, “that take a more holistic approach, and in particular, tackling the problem of people with multiple chronic diseases and conditions.”

“Unfortunately, there’s a large portion of our society that are living with multiple chronic conditions, and the quality of their life just is not very good, and unfortunately, the way our health care system is set up makes it very, very hard to manage,” O’Connor explained.

O’Connor was tapped to run the company as president and CEO, after a stint as president of Whiterabbit.ai, a Silicon Valley healthcare technology startup that is leveraging artificial intelligence to detect potential breast cancer early with diagnostic accuracy and precision, and is herself an investor in ZealCare, she said.

“Primary care, which is supposed to be a more holistic provider of care, they’re very crunched for time, and as a result, we’ve got so many people who are living with these conditions, and aren’t very happy with their care.”

ZealCare plans to launch later in March, said O’Connor, and anticipates closing the initial round of funding in April.