Minute Clinic Cofounder Heads Up Health Care Start-Up

While Zipnosis has e-medicine competitors, none offer the mobility that Zipnosis does, Pearce says. It works with almost any Web browser and a handful of smart phones. The process is also more streamlined than competing services that require patients to schedule visits in advance, be part of a certain health care network, or type messages back and forth with a doctor.

Zipnosis completed an external round of financing last March. The rest of the funding for the company came from its four-person management team.

Beginning in November, Zipnosis began testing its model with the Twin Cities Pipe Trades union, offering “zips” to the members of this construction union and their families. Twin Cities Pipe Trades, which was attracted to Zipnosis’s model as a way to keep health care costs down, has about 6,500 members. If this beta test goes well, it could help open the door to the larger Twin Cities market for Zipnosis in early 2010.

Zipnosis has virtually no overhead costs (no central offices, for instance), the company says, suggesting that it should be able to turn a profit instantly and expand quickly.

“This could become global,” Pearce asserts.