Blueprint Health forms interdisciplinary group to tackle healthcare challenges

Blueprint Health Collective

Digital health startup accelerator Blueprint Health has formed an interdisciplinary group to assess and develop new healthcare technologies to reduce risk and predict the ROI of solutions earlier. The Blueprint Health Collective will be totally separate from Blueprint’s New York City-based accelerator.

Initial members of the Collective include Aetna, Allied Physicians Group, EmblemHealth, HP, Montefiore, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Razorfish Healthware, Sachs Policy Group, and Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. Going forward, the idea is to include members from big pharma, universities and research foundations.

“Too often, corporations invest big dollars into finding new technologies that end up not meeting their priorities, do not easily integrate with their own technology platforms or are too premature to scale,” said Doug Hayes an executive director at Blueprint Health. “As corporations vet the best new technology early on, we need a better way to keep risk in line with an expected return.”

Among the Collective’s areas of interest are niche challenges in healthcare such as pediatric medical devices, clinical decision support, using wearables in disease management, behavioral health in primary care settings. The collective has held its first meeting last month and small working groups have been formed around areas such as thought leadership and co-development.

The collective has held its first meeting last month and small working groups have been formed around areas such as thought leadership and co-development.“What’s exciting about this model is you don’t need to be a hospital or a health system to join,” Hayes said. “This model can allow for different types of collaborations early.” It is designed to provide a way for peers to learn from each other in a setting where their interest are aligned. He added that the Collective is not a think tank, and that it won’t be selling research services.

Blueprint had six accelerator classes since 2012, adding up to 53 portfolio companies.

[Via: medcitynews]