A New Breed Of Accelerators Helps Drive Digital Health

If recent investment trends are an accurate barometer, digital health care (including wireless devices and software and information technology solutions) has emerged as the new darling of early-stage health care investors. There are now a growing number of high-tech digital solutions under development to address everything from provider cost and efficiency issues to patient home-monitoring needs. The field is different than other health care segments, however, because many of the young companies seeking to enter this space are technology focused, and the principals may have little or no experience in the health care arena. As a result, these companies often require a depth of support that goes beyond what they might receive from traditional venture capital (VC) and angel funding sources. To address these needs, a new group of incubators has cropped up, known as digital health accelerators. Focused solely on the digital health technology space, these organizations fund and nurture start-up companies with promising health care technology solutions that need help navigating the complexities of the health care industry and its long list of rules, regulations, and traditions that can frustrate and hinder a young company unfamiliar with the territory.

Although health industry accelerators have been around for a while, the incubators specifically focused on digital health are bringing fresh ideas to technology start-ups developing solutions to both lower health...