07
March
2019
|
07:00 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Modern Healthcare: Health Systems Fire Up Business Incubators

Modern Healthcare recently featured an article about the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator and one of its newest successes with Aiva, the world's first patient-centered voice assistant  platform for hospitals.

As the article explains, it wasn't too long ago that executives for healthcare startup Aiva were coming off a stint in Cedars-Sinai's technology accelerator program. At the conclusion of the company's participation in the accelerator, Cedars-Sinai became one of the company's first investors, awarding Aiva $120,000 in seed money, ongoing guidance and office space to enable the company to further develop the platform. 

Now, just a year later, the company's prospects are even brighter, having gotten funding from Amazon and Google. And Cedars-Sinai patients are participating in a pilot program to see how the platform can help patients and caregivers. The Aiva platform also is compatible with other voice assistants, such as Google Home, and also can be used at home and in senior living communities.

“I can't overstate how important it is to a young startup to get that first live customer to be able to pressure-test the solution on real data with real operations,” said Greg Kuhnen, senior director of research for the Advisory Board told Modern Healthcare. “The instant knowledge of the needs of the system, and the ability to recruit clinicians into the process, is very valuable to startups.”

Anne Wellington, managing director of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, told Modern Healthcare. “When we work with more traditional vendors, we can call their customers and get references. We really want to work with early-stage companies, but they don't necessarily have those resources available to us...(the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator) works as due diligence for the health system while also providing mentorship for the companies.”

Click here to read the complete story in Modern Healthcare. 

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Healthcare Accelerator Welcomes Third Cohort of Startups