Precision Medicine for Genetic Disease
Sunstone is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to find needles in a haystack.
In this case, the “haystack” is the U.S. healthcare system. And the “needles” are children with genetic or neurological conditions. By identifying these kids early, Sunstone can compress a diagnostic odyssey that typically takes seven years into just twelve weeks of treatment.
As a result, according to the company, “families finally get answers, employers reduce runaway costs, and children get the right care at the moment it can change their lives.”
Each year, millions of families enter a painful, costly maze after hearing the words “your child has developmental delay.” What follows is often years of specialist referrals, trial-and-error medications, repeated ER visits, and mounting emotional and financial strain — all with no clear diagnosis and no coordinated care.
For children with underlying genetic or neurological conditions, this endeavor typically lasts at least seven years and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. All told, this journey impacts thirty million patients in the U.S. alone and costs nearly a trillion dollars in wasteful spending a year.
Health plans and self-funded employers have incentives to help these families sooner. But the current system makes it nearly impossible. Individual hospitals only see a small fraction of affected members, and complex cases are scattered across fragmented networks.
Health plans need a solution that better serves their members’ needs, proactively finding them and enabling appropriate care.
This is where Sunstone can help. Its AI finds patterns in data that can signal when a child may need help, long before a formal diagnosis is made.
Its AI platform analyzes health plan claims data to identify children with hidden genetic or neurological-risk signals. Once identified and approved by the health plan, Sunstone activates precision diagnostics and delivers actionable, doctor-to-doctor treatment insights to the child’s existing care team.
Sunstone is led by alumni of Harvard and Tufts, along with leaders in genomics, AI, and concierge healthcare. It combines clinical depth with a track record of building and scaling high-impact solutions.
As an example, Sunstone’s platform identified a nine-year-old girl suffering from uncontrolled seizures and frequent ER visits. She had spent years cycling through anti-epileptic drugs, misdiagnosed and overmedicated, with no clear answers.
The company’s analysis revealed a biotinidase deficiency — a condition that requires a genetic confirmation for treatment. Within weeks, her doctors made the right diagnosis, her treatment plan changed, her health plan captured almost $20,000 in direct annual savings, and the risk of long-term complications was avoided.
After three years of market research and pilot development across the U.S. and Latin America, Sunstone was rebuilt in 2023 as a scalable, software-first platform.
The company was selected for NVIDIA’s Inception Program and the Creative Destruction Lab’s 2024 Computational Health cohort. Today, Sunstone is in discussions with major U.S. health plans covering more than ten million patients. It’s helped more than 400 families and has a ninety-percent opt-in rate.
It aims to scale to deliver results at the employer level in 2026 and the stop-loss insurance level in 2027.
To generate revenue, Sunstone charges a flat-fee model: $10,000 per completed case. It only bills when results are delivered.
Josh is a biomedical engineer and entrepreneur focused on consumer products.
Prior to starting Sunstone, he founded Cuppow, a company creating environmentally-friendly consumer products. Before that, he was Director of Business Development with Emulate, a biotech-research company.
Earlier in his career, Josh was a research assistant at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He joined this institute after spending nearly three years as a graduate researcher with Tufts University. Before that, he was a research technician at MIT, the University of Vermont, and the Vermont Cancer Research Center.
He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Technology from the University of Vermont and a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Tufts.
Calum has spent more than thirty years as a leader in cardio, genomics, and AI. He’s worked extensively with top companies like Apple, Meta, Samsung, and Google. And he ran Apple’s Movement Study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
In addition to his role with Sunstone, he has spent the past twenty-three years as a professor at Harvard Medical School. He’s also a co-founder at Atman Health, a healthcare company using AI to address cardiovascular-disease diagnosis, and Vice Chair for Scientific Innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Earlier in his career, Calum spent more than a decade at Massachusetts General Hospital, working in cardiology and reaching Director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic. He spent five years before that completing his post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Experimental Physiology and a Master’s degree in Medicine from The University of Edinburgh, as well as a Ph.D. in Human Molecular Genetics from the University of London.