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Key people at Savvy Cooperative.
Real Patients, formerly known as Savvy Cooperative, operates a platform that connects healthcare organizations with individuals living with various health conditions to gather authentic patient experiences and insights. The company facilitates structured engagements, allowing patients to share their perspectives through surveys, conversations, and reflections, thereby influencing research, product development, and care improvement efforts within the healthcare industry. This approach ensures patient voices are integrated directly into decision-making processes.
The company was founded by Jen Horonjeff, PhD, and Ronnie Sharpe, both of whom have personal histories navigating chronic illness. Their founding insight stemmed from observing how often patient experiences were misunderstood or overlooked during the development of new medical products and services. They established the platform to enable healthcare innovators to gain a genuine understanding of life from the patient's vantage point.
Real Patients serves a diverse clientele of healthcare organizations, including pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions, by providing access to valuable patient-generated data. The company's vision is to foster a healthcare ecosystem where patient experiences are consistently heard, valued, and appropriately compensated, ultimately contributing to the creation of more effective treatments, relevant research, and improved patient-centric care.
Savvy Cooperative is a patient-owned public benefit cooperative founded in 2016 that operates a research platform connecting patients and caregivers with healthcare companies, researchers, and innovators for sharing insights via surveys, interviews, focus groups, workshops, and user-testing.[1][3][5] It empowers patients across rare and common conditions to co-create better products and services while earning rewards, addressing the gap where healthcare firms often develop solutions without patient input.[1][2][5] Serving pharma giants like AstraZeneca and Bayer, as well as organizations like the American Medical Association, Savvy has grown a community of over 10,000 users across 55+ countries, demonstrating strong momentum through scalable platforms like Ask Patients Platform (APP).[2]
Savvy Cooperative emerged from the personal frustrations of founders Ronnie Sharpe (CEO) and Jen Horonjeff (COO), both patients themselves, who were tired of healthcare companies designing products without meaningful patient involvement.[2][3] Launched in 2016 in New York as a seed-stage VC-backed venture (investors include Indie.vc, MassChallenge, and Start.coop), it evolved from a mission to empower patients into a leading marketplace for qualitative insights.[1][2] Key pivots include launching the Ask Patients Platform, which automated operations, saved team hours, and scaled community growth, turning early traction into partnerships with major healthcare players.[2]
Savvy rides the wave of patient-centric healthcare innovation, where market forces like rising patient advocacy, regulatory pushes for real-world evidence, and digital health demands amplify the need for diverse insights to avoid costly product failures.[1][2][5] Timing aligns with post-pandemic shifts toward inclusive R&D, enabling pharma and medtech to accelerate patient-informed commercialization amid talent shortages in qualitative research.[2][6] By democratizing access to patient voices, Savvy influences the ecosystem, promoting diversity in product development, reducing biases, and setting a co-op standard that challenges traditional top-down models in healthtech.[1][3][4]
Savvy is poised to expand its platform with next-gen features, potentially launching groundbreaking products to further automate and globalize patient engagement, building on APP's success.[2] Trends like AI-driven insights, decentralized trials, and value-based care will propel growth, as healthcare innovators prioritize authentic patient data amid tightening regulations.[5][6] Its influence may evolve toward broader advocacy and co-ownership models, solidifying patient-led innovation while scaling rewards and impact—proving that empowering those with lived experience transforms healthcare from the inside out.[3]
Key people at Savvy Cooperative.
