Andrea R. Coravos

Hi, I’m Andy. I build, write, and research at the edge of the humanities and science.

I like finding things that make life better, and then scaling them so more people have access. Software is often the mechanism, but not always.

I co-founded HumanFirst, where I served as CEO for 7 years, unlocking better research for all humans, sooner. In 2024, we sold the company to ICON (NASDAQ: ICLR), launching the Atlas platform. I am now taking a sabbatical.

What’s getting my attention today

• 📈 M&A advisory // I’ve been advising portfolio companies for the past 10 years. After we completed HumanFirst’s public company transaction, I’ve been helping other founders navigate their M&A processes, focusing on lower to mid-market transactions (sub $250M) that boutique banks can’t or won’t do.
• 💸 Angel investing // I’ve made 60+ angel investments. Some of my public investments are listed on Crunchbase.
• 📝 Writing and Research // I’ll be publishing a few pieces on selling software to pharma and biotechs, public company M&A, investing in Broadway & film, and more.
• 👾 Tinkering // I’m a big fan of side quests during sabbatical. Been playing around with LLMs, learning music, and writing comics.

About

While on sabbatical, I split my time between Dublin, Ireland and Brooklyn, NY.

For the past 9 years, I’ve served on the Board of Directors of VisionSpring. Every year, we help hundreds of thousands of people get access to quality eye care.

Before HumanFirst, I served as an EIR at the FDA in the Digital Health Unit, and before that, a software engineer at Instacart and Akili Interactive, a leader in digital medicine and developer of the first FDA-cleared video game.

Before transitioning into engineering, I worked at KKR Capstone and McKinsey, where I focused on the healthcare, energy, and financial industries. Duke Grad. Birder. Co-founded CODE@HBS, the computer science and engineering organization at Harvard Business School.

My all-time favorite podcast is John O’Donohue and Krista Tippett’s conversation on The Inner Landscape of Beauty.

Past Orgs and Projects

• Founding team at Ummo, a personalized speech coach. Public speaking is hard, Ummo makes it easier. Showcased by the Apple App Store as The Top 3 “Apps We Love” in Spring 2016.
• Former advisor to the Biohacking Village at DEFCON, and a proud supporter of WeHeartHackers.org, a collaborative movement between the medical device and security researcher communities

Working Together

Want to learn more about collaborating with me? Check out my User Guide.

Writing

I occasionally write at blog.andreacoravos.com and peer-reviewed manuscripts are on Google Scholar. Also in these publications:

• Astera Institute: The Early Stage Go-To-Market Handbook: Selling software to pharma and biotech companies, 2025.
• The Neurotech Compendium: Reflections from the Frontier, 2017-25.
• HumanFirst Blog: Biometric remote patient monitoring: what most people aren’t talking about (yet), 2022.
• Nature npj ‘Behind the Paper’: Using connected sensor technologies to measure health at home, 2020.
• Quartz: Treating algorithms like prescription drugs could reduce AI bias, 2019.
• WIRED: Digital Medicine: The doctor prescribes video games and virtual reality rehab, 2018.
• STAT News: Blockchains for biomedicine and health care are coming. Buyer: be informed, 2018.
• STAT News: Blockchains and health care: promising and moving quickly, though no silver bullet, 2017.
• Harvard Business School Digital Initiative: Software-Enabled Clinical Trials, 2017.
• DEFCON Biohacking Village: The Rise of Software as Medicine: Swapping out Pills for Apps, Algorithms, and Signals, 2017.
• NeuroTechX: You can (literally) turn on the lights using your mind— Matilda is not science fiction anymore, 2017.
• NeuroTechX: Can stimulating your nervous system reverse Parkinson’s, reduce depressive episodes, and help you learn the piano? 2017.
• NeuroTechX: The BRAIN Initiative: The race to understand the human brain, 2017.
• Internet Security 101: A starter guide to avoid being an idiot online, 2016.
• The Harbus: Coding is the New Business Literacy, 2016 in the Huffington Post.
• The Harbus: Who Said Harvard MBAs Don’t Code? 2017.
• HBS MBA Voices: Interning As A Software Engineer While At Harvard Business School, 2016.
• HBS MBA Voices: Meet the CODE Club, 2015.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

• Nature npj Digital Medicine: An aligned framework of actively collected and passively monitored clinical outcome assessments (COAs) for measure selection, 2024.
• The Lancet Digital Health:Remote digital health technologies for improving the care of people with respiratory disorders, 2024.
• Nature npj Digital Medicine: Building resilient medical technology supply chains with a software bill of materials, 2021.
• Nature npj Digital Medicine: Verification, analytical validation, and clinical validation (V3): the foundation of determining fit-for-purpose for Biometric Monitoring Technologies (BioMeTs), 2020.
• Nature npj Digital Medicine: Modernizing and designing evaluation frameworks for connected sensor technologies in medicine, 2020.
• Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR): Connected Medical Technology and Cybersecurity Informed Consent: A New Paradigm, 2019.
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics: Decentralized Trials in the Age of Real‐World Evidence and Inclusivity in Clinical Investigations, 2019.
• Karger Digital Biomarkers: Digital Medicine: A Primer on Measurement, 2019.
• Nature npj Digital Medicine: A systematic review of feasibility studies promoting the use of mobile technologies in clinical research, 2019.
• Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR): The Case for a Hippocratic Oath for Connected Medical Devices: Viewpoint, 2019.
• Nature npj Digital Medicine: Developing and adopting safe and effective digital biomarkers to improve patient outcomes, 2019.
• Duke Journal of Economics: Measuring the Likelihood of Small Business Loan Default: Community Development Institutions and the Use of Credit-Scoring to Minimize Default Risk, 2010.
• Duke Journal of Economics: Female Surname Choice: Historical, Cultural, and Branding Influences at Duke University, 2010.
• Journal of South Asian Development: Book Review // Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day, 2010.

Books

• Fast Facts: Digital Medicine - Measurement, 2020. Available on Amazon Kindle free of charge.

Classes & Podcasts

• Vital Signs: Ep 21: Andy Coravos and Ashoka Rajendra on Hyperspecialization in Pharma R&D and Digital Biomarkers, 2023.
• a16z Podcast: Taking the Pulse on Medical Device Security, 2020.
• Flux: Episode 26: Andy Coravos — A Brave New World of Digital Medicine, 2020.
• Venture Stories: The State of Biohacking in 2020 with Andy Coravos, Nina Alli, and Beau Woods, 2020.
• MIT Open Courses: Machine Learning For Healthcare: Lecture 22 - Regulation of ML/AI in the US, 2019.
• Stacey on IoT: Episode 211: Andy Coravos, 2019.
• Tech Tonics: Andy Coravos: Championing Responsible Digital Medicine, 2019.

Mentions

• STAT News: Icon acquires HumanFirst to boost support for digital tools in clinical trials, 2024.
• Forbes: Joy Is Next Frontier Of Precision Medicine, 2023.
• Forbes: Massive Digital Library Released To Accelerate Clinical Research And Cut Costs, 2022.
• Entrepreneur: 100 Women of Influence in 2022.
• Fierce Healthcare and Fierce Medtech’s 17 rising stars in health tech, 2022.
• The Economist: Wearable devices measure a growing array of health indicators. They can detect a disease before it develops, 2022.
• Forbes: The Future Of Medicine: Fighting Deadly Diseases With Smart Devices And Digital Biomarkers, 2022.
• FierceBiotech: Duke, HumanFirst launch center to ensure digital health tools are up to snuff for clinical trials, 2021.
• WSJ: HumanFirst Raises $12 Million, 2021.
• Stacey on IoT: Now is the time to build a connected medical device framework, 2020.
• Forbes: Digital Medicine: Digital Health, Plus Evidence, Plus Humility, 2019.
• TechCrunch: No one knows how effective digital therapies are, but a new tool from Elektra Labs aims to change that, 2019.
• Business Insider: Elektra Labs launched an online catalog for evaluating digital health monitoring tools, 2019.
• MobiHealthNews: Elektra Labs launches connected health tech catalogue alongside $2.9M in seed funding, 2019.
• Politico: A Social Contract For Patient Data, 2019.
• Newsweek: Personalized Health Care and Artificial Intelligence Could Improve Your Life—at the Cost of Your Privacy, 2019.
• Rock Health: Want to create meaningful change in the US healthcare system? Serve a “tour of duty” in the government, 2019.
• WIRED: Inside the group fighting to purge sexism from Europe’s VCs, 2019.
• Edmund Hillary Fellowship: EHF Fellow: Andy Coravos of Elektra Labs, 2018.
• Institutional Investor: Venture Capital Has a ‘MeToo’ Problem. Have Investors Been Ignoring It?, 2018.
• VCGC: Andy Coravos - Founder @ Elektra Labs, 2017.
• Harvard Business School: Three Graduating Students Named Recipients of Dean’s Award for Service to School and Society, 2017.
• Instacart Tech Blog: Our First Engineering Intern, 2016.
• New York Times: Getting Over Stage Fright With the Help of Your Smartphone, 2016.
• LifeHacker: Ummo for iPhone Analyzes Your Speech to Help Improve Your Public Speaking, 2016.
• Inc: 6 Apps That Will Turn You Into an Expert Public Speaker, 2016.
• Business Insider: These 5 Harvard Business School students built an app to help you sound more confident when you speak, 2016.
• USA Today: Two new iOS apps aim to replace an expensive in-person speech coach, 2016.
• BostInno: Startup Lockdown is a Spring Break Student Accelerator, 2016.
• VentureFizz HBS Students Give Up Spring Break to Lock in Startup Concepts, 2016.

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