The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Hospital Partnerships created by Rock Health

Last week, digital health startup accelerator Rock Health released the “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Hospital Partnerships” to serve as a guide for entrepreneurs as they navigate partnering with health providers. Sasha Buscho and Christina Chang both from Rock Health and Dr. Aenor Sawyer of UCSF created the first draft of this guide compiled from 22 interviews with entrepreneurs, hospital administrators, investors, lawyers, clinicians, and researchers. The guide will serve as an ever evolving document that will continue to grow and improve with everyone’s input.

The guide is based on the following premise, how can startups and health care providers partner more effectively to pilot and commercialize digital health innovations?

Establishing a pilot project with a healthcare provider is an effective way for startups to validate their business models and products giving them the opportunity to iterate at a much faster pace than startups who do not have access to validate their assumptions of their healthcare products. Some of the key challenges faced by startups when attempting to partner with health care providers identified in the guide include:

Divergent Risk Profiles

Differing Motivations

Distinct Cultures

Complex Regulations

Rock Health has identified a 4 phased approach to the pilot timeline stating the pilot start should begin at the end of the second phase, Pilot Design and the start of the third phase, Iteration. For startups that require clinical validation, being able to partner with healthcare providers can help avoid a lot of missteps along the way.

A great example mentioned in the guide is the partnership between Cognitive Health Innovations & Harvard Medical Systems as shown below:

To view the full guide see below:

