Amazon Web Services and Chapel Hill, N.C.-based University of North Carolina's Eshelman Institute for Innovation are teaming up to help launch digital health startups.
The collaboration plans to support 25 projects over three years, with the hopes of creating 10 startups based at UNC. They will focus on enterprise systems, clinical services, patient-facing wellness, diagnostics and monitoring, and therapeutic interventions.
UNC faculty will utilize a cloud-native "software factory" run through Amazon Web Services, with services including artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics. The cloud giant will also provide expertise in cybersecurity, biomedical research, high-performance computing and health informatics.
"With this approach, researchers can drop algorithms into a reusable container, snap together a mobile app front end along with a secure backend database, and deploy directly to enrolled patients in their studies," said Eshelman Institute for Innovation's Bob Dieterle, managing director of UNC-Chapel Hill's Digital Health Venture Studio, in a Nov. 30 university news release.
Eight projects have already started, including one that uses AI to minimize the risk of infection during the medication-compounding process.