New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health and startup studio Aegis Ventures formed a joint venture to launch artificial intelligence companies that address healthcare equity, costs and quality.
The companies said the joint venture represents a departure from how venture capitalists and healthcare systems previously worked together to solve major healthcare challenges, according to an Oct. 28 news release.
Six things to know:
- Aegis partners with entrepreneurs to found companies that aim to solve major societal problems within three key areas: data and automation, health and wellness, and digital health and health technologies. As part of the joint venture with Northwell, Aegis plans to invest at least $100 million of seed-stage funds in companies.
- The joint venture is designed to work in tandem with Northwell's front-line clinicians from ideation to implementation. Northwell will test each AI solution within its 23 hospitals to enhance data integrity and privacy, with the goal to accelerate the time it takes to get to the patient's bedside.
- Northwell will also tap its extensive data from its patient population of 2 million to make AI solutions that are equitable. The companies said they will prioritize innovation to reduce racial and socioeconomic biases that drive health inequities and have held back existing AI tools.
- "This joint venture will leverage data from Northwell's patient population, one of the most diverse in the world, along with Northwell's intellectual capital in AI technology," Northwell CEO Michael Dowling said. "Working together, Northwell and Aegis will create companies that bring higher quality, lower cost healthcare to those who need it most."
- Right now, the joint venture and its stakeholders are developing ways to improve maternal health outcomes and chronic disease predictions.
- Northwell has previously developed tools using AI research. It developed an algorithm that predicts patients' overnight stability, which reduces the need to wake patients to check their vital signs. The algorithm was developed using 26 million measurements from 2.3 million patient visits.