Cedars-Sinai Medical Center recently highlighted innovations from its Accelerator Program at Demo Day on Sept. 12 at the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts.
Representatives from 11 companies throughout the United States and Europe participated in the three-month Accelerator Program, in which they received mentorship from Cedars-Sinai doctors, researchers and business leaders. The goal is to accelerate bringing new health technology to market and ensure Cedars-Sinai is on the leading edge of new technologies. During Demo Day, the companies pitched their products to investors and healthcare executives.
Each technology addresses a current challenge in healthcare. Among the innovations presented was an improved hospital inventory method, an advanced platform for healthcare staff scheduling, a “smart” brace for knee replacement patients and a new tissue-separation instrument for pathologists.
“The potential that technology has to affect a lot of patients and to broadly improve care is really exciting,” said Anne Wellington, managing director of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator. “Many of the solutions that we work with through the accelerator have the potential to improve care for our patients at Cedars-Sinai and then throughout the broader healthcare community, both in the U.S. and internationally.”
Forty-seven companies have graduated from the Accelerator Program, which is housed in a building on Beverly Boulevard across from the hospital. The companies have raised $200 million in investment and hired more than 375 people, and their products and services have been used worldwide.
Wellington said she typically receives approximately 400 applicants for the program, which accepts approximately 10 for each class. Cedars-Sinai invests $100,000 in each company, giving it a stake in the business and a chance to net an investment profit if they are eventually bought by a larger healthcare entity.
Feedtrail, a firm in this year’s accelerator class, sells software for surveying patient satisfaction. The company already has 43 healthcare systems in the U.S. and Europe as clients.
“One thing we had not had a ton of experience with prior to this was implementing our platform across large health systems. With size comes complexity,” said Paul Jaglowski, chief executive and co-founder of Feedtrail. “It’s meant a lot [to have] the opportunity to really pick the leadership team’s brains here at Cedars-Sinai.”
Feedtrail’s system, which sends survey questions to patients’ smartphones or tablets with the goal of getting immediate replies that health care providers can act on quickly, is being tested in Cedars-Sinai’s emergency department, imaging operations and the Inpatient Specialty Program.
Additional participants were Lantum, a London-based company that develops software for scheduling hospital staff; AMPAworks, a team of nurses, doctors, pharmacists and engineers working on healthcare inventory-management; ClinicianNexus, a platform allowing health systems to specify their needs for interns and residents in specific fields; FocusMotion Health, which assesses and monitors orthopaedic patients before and after surgery; and Hawthorne Effect, which has developed a virtual platform to track patient data in clinical trials. Also included were Notisphere, which created a digital platform to help hospitals and medical supply companies manage recalls and Virti, which uses virtual and augmented reality coupled with artificial intelligence to virtually transport physicians and students into difficult clinical environments so they can train for emergency response.
For information, visit csaccelerator.com.
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