When it comes to creating a start-up in health care, there are many factors to consider when sourcing and accepting funds. At UPMC Enterprises, we provide strategic, technical, clinical, and financial insights to help launch, support, and grow a startup.
Here are three benefits of collaborating with a health care innovator.
As founders and CEOs of startups begin to source capital, it is important to ask the question ‘What will this source of funding provide the company?’ In many situations, the answer is limited to capital and strategic guidance; however, in terms of startups in the health care vertical, the answer is usually not so simple.
In health care, there are many barriers to entry. From security and implementation complications to resourcing and hiring the best talent, a startup must be agile and patient to create a successful solution in the industry. One of the most important ‘wins’ a health care startup can have is choosing the right organization to collaborate with.
What is a health care innovator, exactly?
Not all venture capital funds are equipped to help overcome the many barriers faced by health care startups. A health care innovator is an organization made up of consolidated resources from health care, tech, and business. These resources are leveraged to facilitate changes in translational sciences (biotech, pharma, etc.) and digital solutions (software, artificial intelligence, etc.) to ultimately lead the charge in health care innovation.
In fact, many different pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and health systems have created their own innovation departments. However, not all health care innovators are created equal.
UPMC Enterprises not only develops technology that provides value to UPMC’s 4-million-member health plan and 40-facility hospital network, but also provides added value and benefits to its portfolio companies.
When collaborating with UPMC Enterprises, startups have access to the following benefits:
- Capital
Without capital, startups don’t have the runway to build new products or pivot to ensure solutions are successful in clinical settings.
Like traditional venture capital firms, UPMC Enterprises applies rigorous due diligence to ensure we are making sound investments. Once a part of our portfolio, we assist companies with strategic, long-term growth through a health care economics lens. We also guide our portfolio in locating new opportunities and expanding into new verticals.
We have screened thousands of companies and taken hundreds of companies and ideas through our pipeline, but only a small portion have completed our rigorous process to secure capital.
- Collaborator
To be successful, startups need to have a partner that is invested and aids in their success financially, strategically, and operationally.
UPMC Enterprises invests in companies at all stages of development and helps them achieve goals that will bring success in the market. We provide expertise in product design, product management, software architecture, pharma, biotech, and investing, among other areas, to overcome the most complex challenges startups face. All opportunities also are supported by a robust team of legal, human resources, finance, and marketing/branding professionals. Our Enterprises team is augmented by the 90K employees at UPMC whom we can pull upon for innovation.
- Customer
Creating a solution in the health care field can be complex, messy, and unclear. Our mission at UPMC Enterprises is to transform ideas into thriving businesses and life changing medicine, and everything we do points back to this mission.
As a customer, UPMC’s network, one of the nation’s largest integrated payor and provider systems, provides companies a unique opportunity for demonstrating viability and scalability across an array of clinical and operational scenarios. We pilot, implement, and test digital products within our health system, and we optimize the commercialization path for life sciences products and solutions addressing diseases with high unmet medical need.
To learn more about how UPMC Enterprises support their portfolio companies in a variety of ways, download one of our case studies.
