As a digital health startup founder, juggling multiple roles and responsibilities while making your vision a reality is a challenging endeavor. But, it’s well worth the effort.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do it all on your own. This article highlights several digital health incubators and accelerators that help startup companies launch, scale, and break into the healthcare industry. Whether you’re tackling the mental health crisis or searching for a cancer cure, connecting with experienced mentors who’ve been through the process of building a business from the ground up may prove extremely valuable to your early stage startup’s success.
Let’s examine some of the best digital health incubators and accelerator programs for passionate entrepreneurs and founders with a vision.
Top Digital Health Incubators and Accelerators
Even though it is possible to break into the healthcare industry all on your own, why not take advantage of the mentorship, connections, funding opportunities, and support systems that a top-notch accelerator or incubator program could provide?
An accelerator or incubator program helps guide early stage healthcare companies through the initial stages of building their first product or service offerings as well as finding their ideal target market and promising customer segments. They also help startups secure the resources, capital from pharma and biotech firms, and potentially even the employees they need to get a head start on growing their business.
Ready to find the right accelerator program for your health tech startup? These are the top accelerators and incubators for healthcare entrepreneurs driving digital health adoption and searching for cures.
1. StartUp Health
- Location: New York, New York
StartUp Health offers founders a community platform that lets companies within the healthcare industry make their idea a reality and take off in their respective markets. Founders who work with StartUp Health are given the tools they need to scale, thrive, and achieve a “moonshot” success that impacts millions of people worldwide.
This accelerator/incubator is perfect for ambitious digital health founders working to solve some of the biggest problems plaguing our society today, such as curing diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease and ending cancer. If you’re a founder who wants to increase your chances of success, StartUp Health offers community-driven entrepreneurial coaching and a dedicated media platform to help your business thrive. The survival rate of the average company StartUp Health invests in is approximately 80%.
2. Cedars-Sinai Accelerator
- Location: Los Angeles, California
Cedars-Sinai Accelerator is dedicated to bringing better healthcare quality to all patients and transforming healthcare efficiency and care. It does this by helping ambitious entrepreneurs start massively successful digital health companies and bring their innovative products and ideas to the market.
Companies selected for the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator program receive an initial investment of $100,000 to ensure that funding is not a barrier to participating. Then they get access to medical experts in 12 nationally ranked specialties as well as access to resources, including software, hardware, and digital health technical resources they can use to help build and grow their company.
3. Jumpstart Foundry
- Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Jumpstart Foundry is an accelerator and venture capital (VC) investment firm that supports early stage companies within the healthcare industry. If a startup founder has an innovative idea or improvement in health, Jumpstart Foundry will give them all of the resources they need to grow their business into a successful company.
Over the years, it’s invested and mentored more than 132 portfolio companies and built a repeatable, scalable process for founders to reach their greatest potential in business. Every startup that joins gets $150,000 as an initial investment, access to a network of executives, mentors, and peers, and a blueprint for monitoring success along the way.
4. MedTech Innovator
- Location: Los Angeles, California
MedTech Innovator is one of the largest accelerator programs for startups involving digital health, medical devices, and diagnostics. By investing in innovative companies within the healthcare industry, its goal is to improve the lives of patients all over the world and ultimately push forward progress and change in positively transforming the healthcare system.
5. Nex3
- Location: San Diego, California
Nex3 (Nex Cubed) is a digital health accelerator that connects healthcare experts with talented founders who are building and transforming the healthcare industry. Healthcare is in trouble on a global scale due to the unsustainable cost, use of legacy systems, and significant barriers between care teams and patients. Nex3 aims to break these barriers and help bring about positive change by investing in founders who have the capacity to make this change happen.
They are currently considered a leader in digital health and have been recognized as one of the top digital health accelerator programs in the health sector.
6. Rock Health
- Location: San Francisco, California
Rock Health is a full-service seed fund that was created to invest in digital health startups who are bringing innovative ideas into the healthcare sector. By investing in ambitious, passionate entrepreneurs who want to make a true difference in healthcare, Rock Health is moving ever closer to its mission of transforming health for all humanity.
7. Blueprint Health
- Location: New York, United States
Blueprint Health is a startup accelerator program that’s driven by mentorship and supporting the intersection of healthcare and technology. For founders who want to make a splash in the health sector and bring their vision to reality, Blueprint Health can offer opportunities for mentorship, connections, and resources to help them meet their business goals.
The Blueprint Health accelerator program works with founders to get customers, raise capital, build sales and marketing collateral, and refine a sales pitch to attract additional funding.
8. Launchpad Digital Health
- Location: San Francisco, California
Launchpad Digital Health is a digital health mentorship and early-stage investment firm that helps founders get a jump start into the healthcare industry and bring their innovative visions to life. They are one of the most active early-stage VC firms that double as an accelerator program and are passionate about giving full support to the founders they work with.
When a startup begins working with Launchpad Digital Health, they receive support by getting access to an expansive insurance company network, government agencies, health systems, pharma, and various technology business partners. They currently invest in startups from seed to Series B.
9. Health Wildcatters
- Location: Dallas, Texas
Health Wildcatters is a seed accelerator program focused on giving ambitious founders the resources and mentorship they need to start companies that transform the healthcare industry. Every year, they choose eight to 12 startups to participate in a three-month accelerator program. Once a startup is chosen, they receive an initial investment and access to resources that the accelerator provides.
Throughout the program, founders are given access to hundreds of mentors that are ready to provide insight, feedback, guidance, and counsel based on their own experiences. With all of these resources at their disposal, founders who work with Health Wildcatters are much more likely to succeed compared to doing it all on their own.
10. Dreamit
- Location: New York, United States
Dreamit is a venture fund primarily focused on investing in and mentoring startups in the digital health, diagnostics, and medical device sectors. Due to their deep domain experience and relationships within the healthtech industry, Dreamit is a great place for founders to get counsel and guidance on growing their company in the most efficient way possible. Since Dreamit is also a venture capital fund, they are able to provide funding directly to the founders they work with in order to help them build their business and bring their dreams of transforming the healthcare industry to life.
If a startup founder wants to become a Dreamit company, they need to demonstrate early traction in the areas of medical devices, digital health, or diagnostics. This means they should already have revenue, evidence of product-market-fit, and pilots. By ensuring the startups it invests in have these “core” components in place, these companies can use their time in the accelerator to meet customers, form partnerships, and build relationships with stakeholders and enterprises in the healthcare sector.