Merck Sharpe and Dohme (MSD), the UK subsidiary of Merck, has partnered with Wayan Open Future, a digital startup accelerator run by Spanish telecom giant Telefonica, to create a new digital health accelerator focused on preventative health.

Called Velocity Health, the accelerator will offer startups $48,800 (32,000 GBP) in funding plus an additional $48,800 in other benefits that include office space in London, a network of mentors, coaches, and investors, and potentially access to Telefonica and MSD’s customer bases. The program will run for 10 months.

“As a healthcare company with a long legacy of investing in innovation and R&D, we want to actively invest in these types of businesses [digital health startups] and harness the amazing talent that is emerging so that we become equally good at ‘recognizing and preventing’ disease as ‘diagnosing and treating’ to help reduce demand for expensive acute services and capacity in the long term,” Mike Nally, managing director of MSD, said in a statement.

In addition to MSD, we have another big pharma company trying to ride the modern digital health revolution — that would be Bayer with its Grants4Apps program, which added its second class in August.

[Via: mobihealthnews]