Seventeen health systems have signed up for a venture firm to help them vet which health tech companies to adopt and invest in, as more hospitals look towards a more concierge-style approach to navigating the digital health tools out there.
Abundant Venture Partners just launched a venture growth platform that would allow health systems, including Northwell Health, MedStar Health and ChristianaCare, to vet and pitch early-stage health tech startups to the health systems according to their needs, Endpoints News learned exclusively.
New memberships with Abundant Alliance, which started with six health systems, have been pretty stagnant since it launched in 2020 up until 2022, CEO Harry Kirschner told Endpoints. But hospitals overwhelmed by pitches for health tech solutions not tailored to their needs or the ways they run have increasingly looked to venture studios with expertise in concierge-style service to help them narrow down their options.
Cedars-Sinai, for example, is working with venture studio Redesign Health to co-develop startups, Endpoints reported last week. Nine health systems, including Northwell, partnered with Aegis Ventures to come up with and deploy health tech solutions in 2024.
“Instead of the tail wagging the dog, like venture firms and entrepreneurs trying to push things at health systems, health systems are actually saying, ‘No, we’re going to define what the most important problems are, and we’re going to get together and support companies where we can create economies of scale and economies of intellect that help all of us,’” Kirschner said. Hospitals tend to have many ideas but are not great at commercializing them too, he added.
Abundant is looking for tech that can make facilities easier for patients to use, streamline administrative workflow and reduce costs. By having a number of health systems join, the idea is for participants to learn from one another and swap ideas. It also allows hospitals to pool their risk and makes this kind of initiative more accessible to mid-sized health systems.
One client, Northwell Health, is already involved with several other similar consortiums through various parts of its health systems. The broader perspective has been helpful, Joseph Moscola, Northwell Health executive vice president of shared services strategy and operations, said. The annual fee to be a part of Abundant’s program, which is discounted if the health system is a limited partner of Abundant’s venture funds, is nothing compared to paying a consulting firm hundreds of thousands for a one-off solution too, he said.
“It’s the closest thing to free consulting we’re ever going to get,” he said.