When entrepreneurs Niko Skievaski, James Lloyd and Luke Bonney first carved out a space at 100state for their latest venture, they had lofty expectations.

The three former Epic employees saw a need for infrastructure to support health IT startups in Madison and thus founded 100health. They made it their mission to start 100 health IT companies in Madison over the next five years by providing their expertise as well as office space.

The company has already accepted six different groups to guide through the startup process. When selecting participants, the team looks for compelling issues in healthcare that affect a broad range of customers as well as a good return on investment. But most importantly, the trio is looking for passion.

“There’s a saying that you have to fall in love with the problem,” Bonney said. “That’s really what we’re looking for—people who can’t sleep at night because they’re fixated on one thing that’s broken in healthcare.”

Once selected, groups are granted 100 days of mentorship. If necessary, the team will work with the startup for up to four “dashes,” or about a year. At each of the dashes, the team sits down with the group members and evaluates the progress and value that 100health has provided.

Along with the co-founders, several professionals in the healthcare industry act as mentors to the startups. The mentors, ranging from health insurance employees to hospital CEOs, are experts in the industry.

One of the first meetings, dubbed the “Mentor Mashup,” gave groups and mentors the chance to ask questions and determine if mentors can add value to the group’s particular healthcare issue. Bonney said that the six groups, chosen in early June, are already off to a great start.

“There’s been an explosion of activity,” Bonney, referring to the initial meetings, said. “There’s going to be a lot of cool stuff that comes out of it.”

One of the groups, Patient Proxy, focuses on inefficiencies within care at the end of life. Research shows that when a hospital increases the amount of living wills their patient population has on file, families are happier and unnecessary costs are reduced, explains Bonney. Patient Proxy looks to dramatically increase the percentage of living wills on file.

Another group, Armory Health, plans to create a mobile app for physical therapists and their patients. The app will be designed to increase adherence to treatment among physical therapy patients via therapist-patient interaction through the app.

Besides the startup groups, the 100health team also is busy working on their own projects.

“The reason we’re doing that is, we are excited to be entrepreneurs,” Bonney said. “So we get super jealous when other people are creating businesses.”

When asked if 100health has plans to expand outside of Madison, Bonney went back to the mission statement and said that the company will primarily work with startups in Madison. He brings up Madison’s reputation of having more professionals with healthcare IT market knowledge than any other area in the country. The company’s vision is to build Madison’s reputation as the place to start healthcare IT ventures.

“Would we ever start companies outside Madison? Maybe,” Bonney said. “But what we really want to do is start companies here because we think Madison is really the spot to do it.”