Startups, Pharma

Bayer expanding its digital health accelerator program to San Francisco

The German life sciences company plans to bring its accelerator program for digital health startups to San Francisco. It's now available in Berlin, Moscow, and Shanghai among other places.

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Digital health startups looking to solve the pharma industry’s problems will be heartened to hear that German life sciences company Bayer is bringing its Grants4Apps accelerator program to San Francisco.

That announcement came from Dirk Schapeler, head of Bayer’s Lifescience iHub, who was speaking at the Wearable Tech + Digital Health + Neurotech Silicon Valley conference at Stanford University, Tuesday.

Bayer’s Lifescience iHub is based in Mountain View, California, and is aimed at infusing the digital component in all of Bayer’s businesses including pharmaceuticals through collaboration with tech companies. As such the company is interested in sensors, AI, machine learning and digital apps.

Grant4Apps is Bayer’s accelerator for digital health startups worldwide. It has its roots in Berlin, where the multinational is based but has expanded to multiple other locations — including Moscow, Tokyo, Shanghai, Italy, Barcelona, and Singapore, per its website.

“We are also now working on a version here for San Francisco that we will launch this year,” Schapeler told the audience gathered at Stanford. [After his presentation, Schaepeler declined to answer questions about the program, referring them to a Bayer spokeswoman]

Schapeler’s presentation showed that the Grants4App accelerator has received more than 1,050 startup applications to date from more than 70 countries. Around 50 startups have received grants from Bayer and 14 startups have taken part in the accelerator program, out of which 11 are still in business.

Most importantly perhaps, the program has resulted in more than 10 active projects that Bayer is collaborating on with the startup community.

Last year, Demo Day at Bayer gathered four digital health startups that were part of the 2016 class as well as multiple other guest pitches. The four that were accepted as part of the program were:

Oasis Websoft – Ghana. bisaapp.com. Telemedicine. Bisa means “ask” in the Ghanaian Twi language. The company is building a mobile app that allows smartphone users to communicate remotely with medical practitioners. The goal is to solve the healthcare access problem that is a challenge in many nations.

Turbine – Hungary. turbine.ai.
The Hungarian artificial intelligence company is hoping to leverage that technology to design and develop effective combination therapies to battle cancer.

Vital Smith – Korea. vitalsmith.com.
The Asian company is developing a saliva-based fertility test. The goal is to commercialize medical ideas employing latest technology and design.

xbird – Germany. xbird.io.
The German AI company has an ambitious goal: use technology to save 1 million lives by 2020. The clock is ticking on xbird as they use data science and machine learning using data captured by smartphones and wearables to analyze and detect adverse health events before they occur.”

If one were to draw one conclusion from last year’s cohort, Bayer is big on AI.

Photo: 9amstock, Getty Images

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