A new health technology accelerator is looking for applicants for its five month program.It is the latest in a steady growth of organizations helping entrepreneurs navigate the long sales cycle and other unique challenges healthcare industry startups face.
Relevant Health, based in Rockville, Maryland, was formed through a partnership between BioHealth Innovation, Montgomery County’s Economic Development department and Product Savvy, which will run the day-to-day operations.
BioHealth Innovation previously partnered with DreamIt Health Baltimore in its inaugural year.
At five months, the program is a little longer than what’s typical for an accelerator. In exchange for a $50,000 investment, Relevant Health takes up to an 8 percent equity stake. Despite the numerous healthcare accelerators dotted around the country and having at least two in the region — DreamIt Health Baltimore and 1776 in Washington D.C. — there wasn’t one in Montgomery County, in any case.
Among the technology applicants it is looking for in healthcare are cloud services, aggregating data from the Internet of Things, hospital admin support and apps. It will pick eight to 10 teams of applicants for its inaugural class. The teams will work out of Rockville Innovation Center. The application deadline is July 31.
Evan Haines, a senior technology strategist with Product Savvy Consulting, told MedCity News that the business works with early to mid stage technology companies. “The program, will be focused on product development — getting down into the weeds — not just on presentation.”
He said it’s not a critique but it sounds a bit like one. “The reality of health technology is people want to know how many users you have. We need to get to [product] validation much faster.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Haines acknowledged that one of the biggest challenges for startups in heath tech is that partners move at different paces.
One resource it has identified are the numerous military veterans in the region tied to the healthcare system who could serve as mentors to its program.
One thing the accelerator currently lacks is a hospital partner or payer, which makes a huge difference in surmounting the difficult challenge of gaining access to the institutions that ultimately assess and use new technology.
Photo: Flickr user Kim Seng
