ROCHESTER – Mayo Clinic recently welcomed four early-stage health tech artificial intelligence startups to Rochester to launch a 20-week program to help the young companies become “market-ready.”
Mayo Clinic Platform’s Accelerate program brought in Denver-based cliexa, New York-based Quadrant Health, Boston/New York-based ScienceIO and Australia-based Seer Medical as the next cohort of companies in the twice-a-year program.
Eric Harnish, the vice president of Partner Programs for Mayo Clinic Platform, explained that Accelerate provides de-identified patient datasets and other tools as well as experienced mentors to help the startups fine-tune how their programs analyze data.
As the end of the program, the four companies will return to Rochester for a Demo Day to show off their products.
In most cases, Mayo Clinic accepts equity in the company.
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“We do have a payment structure that could be an equity. When you're an early stage startup, equity is preferred. We receive a small amount. It's really to fund the program and it's very minimal,” said Harnish.
Since the startups are not local and don’t close ties with Mayo Clinic, what is the goal of the Accelerate program?
“Mayo Clinic really wants to play a role to help these organizations grow and improve health care,” he said. “Our objective is to build that ecosystem of companies that Mayo Clinic has to work with to develop and validate solutions.”
Jeff Kiger tracks business action in Rochester and southeastern Minnesota every day in "Heard on the Street." Send tips to jkiger@postbulletin.com or via Twitter to @whereskiger . You can call him at 507-285-7798.
