Intermountain Healthcare and Healthbox are launching what they say is the unique healthcare innovation and venture model that consists of three initiatives — the Intermountain Foundry, Strategic Investments and the Healthbox Salt Lake City Accelerator — all of which should stimulate collaboration between inventors, entrepreneurs and healthcare industry experts to improve quality of service while making care more affordable.
The Intermountain Foundry will provide a structured framework for helping high-potential employee ideas and near-market concepts become commercial businesses. Strategic Investments will source companies from the broader healthcare ecosystem and develop partnerships that include investment and potential customer relationships. Finally, the Healthbox Salt Lake City Accelerator brings the Healthbox infrastructure to Salt Lake, connecting the resources and expertise throughout the region to support outside entrepreneurs with progressive products at various stages of development.
“Collaborating with Healthbox provides us not only with the foundation to expand the impact of their solutions, but the means to form relationships with entrepreneurs and their technologies that will improve quality and reduce the cost of care for our patients,” said Bert Zimmerli, Intermountain Healthcare’s CFO.
Healthbox has a portfolio of more than 80 active companies and strategic partnerships with more than 30 healthcare organizations across U.S. On the other hand, Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based not-for-profit system consisting of 22 hospitals, 185 clinics, a Medical Group with about 1,100 physicians, a health plan division called SelectHealth, and other health services.