John Beadle, co-founder and managing partner of Aegis Ventures.
Aegis Ventures
For Year, Michael Dowling says he’s tired of hearing outsiders argue that the health system is too slow to adopt new technology. He thinks the critics are wrong. “We’re inundated with technology companies coming to us with products and ideas,” said Dowling, president and CEO of New York-based Northwell Health. forbes. “A lot of them are not based on the reality of how health care is actually delivered.”
That’s why Dowling, through a partnership with startup incubation studio Aegis Ventures and its $100 million fund, is creating a more thoughtful, more intentional approach to the $15.6 billion nonprofit health system (2022 operating revenue). We have been working to promote innovation. Together, they are building companies based on what health systems actually need, not what Silicon Valley venture capitalists think they need.
Aegis’ model takes a final step around this problem by putting the health system’s early customers on the startup’s cap table and using them as a testing ground. On Tuesday, Aegis announced that nine health systems, including Northwell, California’s Stanford Healthcare, and Louisiana’s Ochsner Health, have formed a new consortium centered around the company’s model. We will work with Endeavor Health, Indiana University Health, Memorial Hermann Health System, Novant Health, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, and Sharp HealthCare to develop startups that address real health system needs. In total, the consortium’s operating revenue will exceed $65 billion and the number of employees will be his 300,000.
“If we succeed at proof of concept with one of these systems, given the connective tissue across the consortium, we can scale the system and get it to patients faster,” said Aegis Ventures co-founder and CEO said John Beadle, partner in the business. Forbes.
John Noseworthy, Chairman of Aegis Ventures Digital Consortium.
Aegis Ventures
The so-called Digital Consortium will be led by John Noseworthy, former president and CEO of Mayo Clinic.A story that touches your nose forbes The key to success is getting buy-in from frontline employees who are aware of the real, day-to-day needs for the new tools being developed. “When staff are engaged in ideas, planning, implementation, testing, and improvement, they are eager to change broken systems,” Noseworthy said. They are much less motivated to do so if they have a mix of different solutions that don’t solve the actual problem or don’t fit into their workflow, he added.
With the introduction of Aegis, health systems can choose to invest on a per-trade basis and earn capital directly with no management fees. “Health systems could end up with double-digit ownership rates and could invest earlier when there is still upside,” Beadle said. forbes. This means hospitals have more skin in the game, which is a big difference from the typical hospital-venture relationship. Hospitals and venture companies are limited partners or late-stage investors in funds that end up with significantly less capital.
The Aegis model may sound promising, but few of its members are fully committed to it. Many are testing the waters by participating while continuing to make separate investments from their own venture arm or off-balance sheet. “That doesn’t mean we won’t continue to entertain and collaborate with other companies that offer good products,” Northwell’s Dowling said. “This is not an either-or situation. That’s more of a compliment.”
One of the big pain points for Northwell, and for most health systems, is the amount of documentation required to do everything from discharging a patient to verifying insurance status. Northwell is working with Aegis to use generated AI at a startup called Ascertain to build an army of management bots to help with some of these tasks. For example, understanding what an insurance company requires to transfer a patient from a hospital to a rehabilitation facility. . “We believe the health system is the best brand in health care,” Beadle said. “So how do we make sure they have the tools and capabilities to solve the problem?”
Another challenge is getting patients to show up for their appointments in the first place. That’s where another co-development startup called Caire comes into play. We develop software that tracks patient care journeys and provides reminders. Northwell and Aegis leverage Optain to help detect diabetic complications early with an easy-to-use device that screens eyes for diabetic retinopathy and generates a cardiovascular risk score using AI I’m trying.
Both Northwell and Aegis were also investors in Hume, a conversational AI startup that claims to interpret people’s emotions based on how they speak. This technology is not specific to the healthcare industry and is used by over 1,000 companies. “This applies to a lot of what we’re looking to build in the future,” Beadle said. “We might start with health care, but then we might expand.”
The next step is to raise tens of millions of dollars in Series A funding for each of these startups and continue co-development. This is where the other health systems in the consortium come in and choose the company that best fits their needs. (This is in addition to developing our own in-house startup with Aegis).
The hope is that in collaboration with four to five other co-development partners, these health system-grown startups will be able to scale quickly. “If we are successful, we will be an essential partner to these health systems,” Noseworthy said. “They’ll say, ‘Wow, you’ve helped us do more than we ever thought possible. Let’s do one more thing.’
