Startup America
Administration Expands Startup America to Include Healthcare Information Exchanges for Health IT
Startup America is the White House initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation. Healthcare technology, particularly health IT, is a clear area where a great deal of innovative activity is taking place. It makes perfect sense, therefore, that Startup America, has expanded its effort to support developers of Health IT through a new program called Innovation Exchanges for Health IT.
Led by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, as part of the Investing in Innovations (I2) program, the Innovation Exchanges for Health IT are special coordinated forums bringing innovators and healthcare organizations together in order to find potential test bed opportunities.
The first Innovation Exchange held in Philadelphia in May 2011, brought 10 Health IT Innovators and 10 Hospitals/Healthcare providers together to engage in matchmaking for future collaborations.
The administration is encouraging coordinated exchanges that may lead to potential collaborations — mutually beneficial to both early stage innovators and technology adopters. These events allow forward-looking care organizations to evaluate, on a trial basis, the potential of new technologies for pilot. Simultaneously, the events allow innovators to meet possible hosts for technological research and development — a critical step in the innovation timeline.
Startup America “DC-to-VC” Health Care Summits
DC-to-VC (Venture Capitalists) summits create targeted engagements between senior administration officials and entrepreneurs, investors, and students in communities across the country. The Administration is holding DC-to-VC events supporting dialog on the innovation challenges within healthcare.
The goals of these DC-to-VC engagements are:
- Communicating how the President’s policies and priorities are unleashing new market opportunities and spurring innovation in health care
- Inspiring college and graduate students and other would-be entrepreneurs to pursue these opportunities
- Evangelizing the need to “invent” our way to help deliver on Presidential goals
- Listening to feedback from—and responding in a timely fashion to—the innovation community to capture important stories, lessons and feedback on relevant policies
DC-to-VC Health Care has hosted numerous events across the country since 2010. These events are led by the Chief Technology Officer of the Department of Health and Human Services, Todd Park, and are in collaboration with:
- The White House
- Office on the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Center
Marketplace Incentives
Federal support of health IT via the HITECH Act has created a rich environment for technological innovation and corresponding financial investment -- creating significant opportunities for entrepreneurial development in health technology.
These favorable innovation conditions are amplified by the Affordable Care Act, which aligns incentives for producing quality-driven health system efficiencies through new payment models and pathways for the incorporation of new technologies.
Current Discussion Topics
DC-to-VC summits are already directly leading to substantive initiatives in support of innovators in health IT, care delivery, and other technologies.
Current discussion topics include:
- Federal support of the current development environment
- Development of new health IT markets
- Removing barriers to entry for innovators and entrepreneurs
- Methods of incentivizing health IT adoption
- Accelerating Meaningful Use through health IT innovation
- System and modular certification
- Federal leadership in health IT privacy and security
- Infrastructure needed to support ACOs and other new care delivery and reimbursement models
- Support of innovations facilitating patient-provide engagement
- Standards and inter-operability
- Health Information Exchange
Startup America
Startup America is the White House initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation.
The Obama Administration is rolling out a set of entrepreneur-focused policy initiatives in five areas:
- Unlocking Access to Capital
- Connecting Mentors
- Reducing Barriers
- Accelerating Innovation
- Unleashing Market Opportunities
More on the Administration’s efforts at whitehouse.gov/startupamerica.
A progress report on Startup American and Startup America success stories are found on the White House’s website.