Aurora Health Care, one of the nation’s leading not-for-profit health care systems, announced a couple of days ago that it led an investment in the digital health long-term accelerator StartUp Health.
VentureBeat has since learned that the round came in at around $5 million, and that it is just the first of what will likely be a total of six similar rounds to be announced between now and the end of the year. The new rounds will be announced one at a time. We will keep an eye out for the filings.
The coming rounds, we’re told by a source with knowledge of the investments, will be led by large organizations from the consumer, retail, health care, tech, and other industries. StartUp Health wants to create a group of investors that can bring in ideas from all sides of health care, for the benefit of the portfolio companies.
“The Aurora and StartUp Health collaboration is significant because together we can quickly identify the next generation of solutions for the people we serve,” said Aurora CEO Nick Turkal, M.D., in a statement.
“We’re living in an age where every aspect of our lives is being reinvented by technology; the opportunity now is to streamline how the most effective innovations can be applied to improve the health and wellness of our patients. With StartUp Health we can do this more quickly and efficiently,” Turkal said.
Aurora will be afforded early access to proposed innovations from StartUp portfolio companies, and will be able to work side by side with the companies to implement solutions in Aurora’s provider and patient communities. Aurora will also get dibs on innovations to invest in, to pilot, and to implement in its own facilities.
StartUp will use the new funding rounds to “to help accelerate the review and adoption of innovations aimed at transforming the delivery of care,” the accelerator said in a statement.
StartUp Health now has 103 digital health portfolio companies. In exchange for equity, the accelerator offers services ranging from analytics and intelligence to mentoring and networking during a long-term relationship with startups in its portfolio.
StartUp Health started out as a relatively small microfund, operating on only about $3 million in investment money. But the organization has grown; it now has 25 employees.
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