Derek Streat

Derek Streat's new online venture arose from the worst circumstances. Last year, the Seattle entrepreneur learned that his 2-year-old daughter was suffering from a rare, life-threatening autoimmune disease.

"When that happened, I did the only thing that I know how to," said Streat, who previously co-founded AdReady and worked as an early executive at Classmates.com. "I kind of went into battle mode and went highly analytical on this. I started consuming as much information as a I could and tried to make sense of it."

From that very personal experience, Medify was born. The stealth company -- formed six months ago by Streat and former Farecast vice president of technology Jay Bartot -- today is announcing $1.3 million in venture financing led by Voyager Capital. Medify's goal is pretty straightforward: to help families better manage the complex maze of medical information associated with the most challenging health care situations.

Streat, of course, has seen this first hand. He and his wife estimate that they've spent more than 1,000 hours researching medical studies and insurance issues related to their daughter's condition. Along the way they incurred $1 million in medical bills, luckily most of which was paid for by the insurance companies.

"What we realized throughout this process is that managing our daughter's condition is absolutely the most complicated, information intensive and important project, if you will, of our life," said Streat, who created a massive spreadsheet to keep track of developments.

Along the way, Streat realized that there had to be an easier method to not only track down the data but to make sense of it in a manner that could lead to better medical decisions. In that regard, Streat said he was looking for the equivalent of a Mint.com for personal health.

Jay Bartot

It's not an easy task accessing complex health and medical information, which Streat said is "trapped" in highly-technical literature or "locked in black boxes within insurance companies, hospitals and other institutions."

Streat took the idea to Bartot, who he had met through venture capitalist Chris Brookfield.

Bartot said he was attracted to the idea -- not only because of Streat's passion but also due to the fact that it represented a really tough data challenge. That's something that Bartot was accustomed to tackling, having previously worked at Farecast to come up with technologies that analyzed airfare pricing.

Obviously, making sense out of complex medical information could have a much bigger impact on people's lives than predicting whether an airfare would go up or down in price. "Dealing with someone who is really more motivated for your product was definitely something I was looking for," said Bartot. "And I felt this was it."

Medify plans to launch a beta program early next year, starting with a few specific disease conditions and target areas. Eventually, Streat said the goal is to have a broad offering that encompasses a wide variety of conditions. The startup -- incubated at Voyager Capital's offices -- has been kicking around potential revenue models. But Bartot and Streat didn't want to go into too much detail about those ideas.

There's certainly plenty of competition chasing the idea, from big companies like WebMD and Microsoft's HealthVault to startups like Navigating Cancer and Patients Like Me.

But Streat, for one, said that none of those entities really take the next step to mine the data in effective ways for one's individual care plan. Many of the competing sites are just dumb repositories of information or community-oriented chat boards, Streat says.

"There are a lot of people thinking about how to aggregate things out there, but we think you can use technology to derive value from that," said the 38-year-old entrepreneur. "The piece that we think is missing out there is deriving insight from data."

Bartot adds that the service is designed to make the individual the quarterback of their own situation, making key decisions about the specific illness. In the current health care system, Bartot adds that doctors aren't paid to do research on behalf of their patients. "They just don't have the time," he said. "The system isn't set up so that (doctors) are adequately compensated, so people have to take it into their own hands and get involved if they want optimal care."

As a result of the financing, Bill McAleer of Voyager is joining the company's board. He said that Medify hits on a number of macro trends, including people taking more control of their health and an aging Baby Boomer population.

And while he admits that a number of companies are trying to attack the market, he said many of the competitors don't connect the information to the primary or secondary care givers like Medify plans to do.

"It is really taking data and using that data to improve the care giving situation with the patient," said McAleer.