The M-1 accelerator is housed at incubator FastForward East at Johns Hopkins Medical Campus in Baltimore.
Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures kicked off its inaugural cohort of healthcare startups last month with a focus on connected health and fitness. Called M-1 Ventures, a reference to first-year medical students, the accelerator represents a change of strategy for cultivating early stage companies. Although Johns Hopkins previously collaborated with Dreamit Ventures, it was interested in developing an accelerator on its own. To that end it formed regional alliances with the University of Maryland, Village Capital., and the family office of Baltimore-based Under Armour CEO and Chairman Kevin Plank — Plank Industries.
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Other accelerator supporters include UM Ventures —the commercialization arm of the University of Maryland, The Abell Foundation, Brown Advisory, the Maryland Department of Commerce and Village Capital.
Two of the five participants sprang from Johns Hopkins, but the accelerator is open to healthcare entrepreneurs from the Baltimore region. Startups selected for the 16-week program received $25,000 in investment funding and are eligible for additional investments depending on ratings from their peers in the program, according to M-1’s website.
Banking executive and serial entrepreneur Tony D’Agostino and 500 Startups cofounder Paul Singh manage M1 from its offices in the shared workspace FastForward East — one of a handful of incubators on the Johns Hopkins Medical Campus in Baltimore. In a phone interview with D’Agostino, he said the idea is to use Maryland resources to nurture local talent and expand hotspots for healthcare investment beyond the usual places Boston, Silicon Valley and New York.
“Part of what we want to do is not only help these companies grow but let them know that Baltimore is a great place to start a company,” D’Agostino said. “We have all the resources we need here to grow these businesses and we didn’t feel we needed someone to come from outside [the region] to do it.”
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He added: “Our objective is to ensure that these companies make progress and that they are even more attractive to investors than they are right now.”
The healthcare startups include:
B.well Led by Kristen Valdes, the CEO and Founder, the company seeks to make consumers feel in control of their healthcare. The app helps users manage medical history, prescriptions, appointments, out-of-pocket medical payments, and integration of wearable devices.
EduMD Johns Hopkins surgeons are behind EduMD, a group that wants to improve the way medical residents are evaluated through a software program called MileMarker. The tool is geared to the assessment of surgical procedures such as cleft lip and palate surgery, aesthetic surgery, burn care, nerve repair, and breast reconstruction.
RoundTrip an on-demand car service for non-emergency healthcare transport hails from Philadelphia. It is one of several companies seeking to make it easier for patients to get to their medical appointments to cut the number of no shows.
MotionVibe is a social network for gym goers — both members and trainers. It currently works with 45o gyms.
BurnAlong provides a way for gyms to bring their fitness classes into the home of subscribers. Users of the app can also invite friends to join classes with them.
