Hospitals, Startups

Hackensack Meridian Health uses $25M fund to invest in Pillo Health

Hackensack will work with Pillo to find ways to use its Amazon Alexa-like robot within the health system.

Through its $25 million Innovation Center fund, Hackensack Meridian Health has invested in Pillo Health, a Boston startup focused on helping patients at home.

The company offers an Amazon Alexa-like robot that answers individuals’ questions and dispenses their medication. The device can also digitally coordinate prescription refills and connect patients with their doctors and family members.

“Innovation is in our DNA at Hackensack Meridian Health,” Andrew Pecora, the health system’s chief innovation officer and president of physician enterprise, said in a news release. “This first project funded less than a year after launching our ideation center is a major achievement to improve healthcare.”

Through the new relationship, the two entities will join forces to find ways to use the robot within the health system and come up with a commercialization plan to bring Pillo to market.

Hackensack set up the innovation center with New Jersey Innovation Institute and announced its launch last year. It allows startups to bring their ideas before a panel of experts, dubbed the “Bear’s Den,” in a Shark Tank-like manner. The Bear’s Den, which includes Pecora, Hackensack’s co-CEOs Robert Garrett and John Lloyd, venture capitalists and a patent attorney, among others, decides which companies deserve investment.

As Pecora mentioned in the release, Pillo is the first organization to receive financing from the incubator.

The Boston startup was also the runner-up of the 2017 Connected Patient Challenge, a competition developed and launched by Boston Scientific Corp. It asks participants to use big data as a way to cut costs and improve patient care and outcomes. For its second place prize, Pillo took home $15,000 worth of in-kind services from Boston Scientific and $10,000 in Google Cloud credits.

As for the Edison, New Jersey-based health system, it recently teamed up with Lyft to establish a rideshare command center geared toward providing non-emergency medical transportation to patients in need of a ride. Previously, Hackensack Meridian’s JFK Medical Center launched a pilot with Lyft for those who need rides home in non-emergency cases.

Photo: StockFinland, Getty Images

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