MoneyBall Medicine

High-tech entrepreneurs are targeting opportunities in health care.

A family health crisis led to a career detour for Nat Turner, a technology tycoon.He watched a close relative struggle with the bureaucracies surrounding leukemia treatments for a child. Turner saw the child’s father carry volumes of paper medical files and DVDs around the country because the family’s team of cancer specialists could not easily share those files. It was a familiar story for Turner and his business associate Zach Weinberg, who had seen other family members struggle with cancer treatments, medical records and doctor-to-doctor data exchanges. Weinberg and Turner realized they could apply their past successes in high-tech to the health care industry.

The two men had sold an analytics-driven advertising company to Google for $81 million in 2010. They believed that same data-driven processes was ideal for tracking cancer treatments and changing the medical records industry. The high-tech entrepreneurs launched Flatiron Health in 2012 after conducting extensive interviews with nurses, oncologists, researchers and hospital leaders. Weinberg and Turner sought...