Health IT

(Q&A) Dreamit Ventures has added a bunch of healthcare partners to its accelerator

Many of its pharma and medical device partners are looking for “beyond the pill” and “beyond the device” digital health solutions, according to Dreamit Chief Innovation Officer Steve Barsh.

steve barshDreamit Ventures has added several corporate partners who will work with its accelerator startups. Although it has worked with Penn Medicine and Independence Blue Cross ever since it launched a health tech accelerator, it has taken a more low key approach to other healthcare partners and now several have become partners of record. They include Xerox Healthcare, Becton-Dickinson, Merck, Pfizer, Thomas Jefferson University, Temple Health, Universal Health Services, Digitas Health and Zimmer Biomet.

The companies are part of a customer immersion program that’s designed to provide health tech startups participating in its 14-week program with the critical commercial feedback they need to de-risk their products and services, according to a company statement. It is once again looking for entrepreneurs to apply for its newest cohort.

I asked Dreamit Chief Innovation Officer Steve Barsh how the new partners will fit into Dreamit’s accelerator program. He answered some questions I put to him in an email.

Can you give me a better sense of how these “customer immersions” work on the healthcare side?

There are hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies, insurers, integrated systems, and others in the healthcare space that are interested in seeing highly curated innovative startups. They know the types of companies that come through Dreamit and are very interested in hosting them onsite for a “Customer Immersion.”  The customer immersion partners get a chance to “see over the horizon” to the next wave in innovation in the space. And since the companies are from a highly selective global applicant pool, it’s very interesting to them.

Haven’t these partners identified what their interests/needs are?

Yes, many of these partners have identified their interests/needs. When the entire cohort comes in for a Customer Immersion, there is very good overlap with their interests. At the same time, hosting Customer Immersion Partners realize that sometimes the strongest innovation comes from an area they were not specifically looking at.  If you think outside healthcare, 5 years ago if you asked a hotel brand what their biggest interests/needs are, they would probably say things like “better guest-centric systems, stronger CRM, etc.”  And then Airbnb emerges out of nowhere — not hitting against a specific stated need / interest. Dreamit’s forward-thinking Customer Immersion Partners are looking not only for areas of specific interest, but want to look more broadly and be exposed to new ideas that were not previously in their consideration set.

Pharma and medical device companies are new to Dreamit’s network as far as partners are concerned, no? How will the likes of Pfizer, Becton-Dickinson and Xerox fit into your network? What kind of priorities have they identified?

In the current Dreamit Health cohort we have companies like Admetsys (artificial pancreas), Prevnos (cancer diagnostics), and Neofluidics (simplified microfluidic tools for drug discovery and research). Pharmaceutical and medical device partners are very interested in innovative approaches like these in the diagnostics, drug discovery, and medical device spaces. Further, many of these partners are looking for “beyond the pill” and “beyond the device” digital health solutions.  So Dreamit Health companies like Addicaid (addiction treatment wellness platform), MedAware (identifies and alerts prescription errors in real time), and Wellth (applying behavioral economics to improve customer health and retention) are very interesting.  And this is not the first time Dreamit has been in the pharma and medical device space. Since Dreamit Health started in 2013 there have been companies like Sisu Global Health (Hemafuse for blood loss recovery), Biomeme (turns a smartphone into a gold-standard DNA analysis tool), Graphwear (wearable sweat patch that monitors dehydration, glucose and lactic acid), and Towerview Health (end-to-end solution that helps patients manage complex medication schedules).

Will each of these companies play a role in whittling down the health tech startup applicants to your program?

Dreamit does work with select partners to understand their strategic interests and solicits input during the final section process.

Are these partners also planning to serve as strategic investors?

Some will.

Photo: Bigstock Photos

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