DENVER – As lawmakers debate the future of health care in the United States, entrepreneurs are going head-to-head in Denver to see who has the best and brightest ideas for solving the industry’s problems.
Six startups will face off Thursday night at the Prime Health Challenge, a ‘Shark Tank’-style pitch competition with $150,000 on the line.
The challenge is put on by Prime Health, an “ecosystem” of different agencies that are working together to foster innovation in the health care industry with the goal of reducing costs and improving outcomes.
This is the fourth year of the Prime Health Challenge and CEO Steve Adams said the idea behind the pitch competition is to find the cream of the crop within the field and help them succeed.
“We want to identify the best innovation companies” and help them turn their ideas into real solutions, Adams said. “We’re able to facilitate that connection.”
Startups in the Prime Health Challenge program have spent the past three months working on their business plans and their pitches with the challenge judges, who are not only experts in the health care field but also people who might end up using or buying a startup’s product down the line.
“The real prize here is that at the end of the challenge, the host institutions…they raise their hands and say ‘We’d like to do a pilot,’” Adams said.
Those host institutions include major players like Kaiser Permanente, UC Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado, so winning the competition gives startups a chance to put their products to use in a real clinical setting.
The six finalists in this year’s challenge include Nymbl Science, which has developed systems for improving balance; Listen.MD, which uses artificial intelligence to replace the traditional medical scribe; Ride Health, a system for coordinating transportation for patients; AI Health, which makes software to help manage patients after they leave the hospital; Cliexa, a mobile platform for tracking chronic health problems; and Redox, which helps integrate multiple health care systems.
The Prime Health Challenge takes place on Thursday, Oct. 19 from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at EXDO Event Center in Denver. The event is open to the public and tickets cost $15.
For more information, log on to primehealthchallenge.com.