MassChallenge Healthcare Challenge Program combines the power of innovation and entrepreneurship to advance scalable solutions by fostering collaborations between our corporate partners and startups. By bringing health care’s most promising startups together with the sector’s strongest brands, we create opportunities to innovate and solve some of the industry’s most pressing challenges.

MassChallenge Healthcare Challenge Program and our industry-leading partners are dedicated, now more than ever, to accelerate the pace of innovation. We are seeking groundbreaking startups to join us in our efforts to solve health issues like digital and mobile health, AI in healthcare, health equity and access, medical devices and wearables, chronic disease management, and more. If you are a startup founder looking to disrupt the status quo and make meaningful change, join our global network to collaboratively solve health challenges.

HEALTHCARE CHALLENGE PARTNERS

The overall theme for this year’s challenges is focused on the ‘intersection of health & wealth’. Financial services firms, specifically Insurance companies, can offer customers additional value beyond insurance products such as free medical screenings, discounts and rewards for maintaining a healthy and safe lifestyle. We believe that there is a direct correlation between one’s health & wellness and their financial stability. We would like to help our customers live longer, healthier lives by giving them access to tools, resources and offerings that promote a healthy lifestyle and enable stronger financial wealth. This aligns with our purpose: “We help people secure their futures and protect the ones they love”.

Our first challenge is to bring innovative, scalable wellness services that positively affect mortality and morbidity risk to MassMutual’s policyowners.

• To identify new or emerging wellness capabilities that can help MassMutual policyowners gain knowledge about their health that may help them improve their overall health and longevity through disease risk detection and prevention actions including ongoing monitoring & support
• To enhance our capabilities within key areas of wellness including physical activity & sleep, disease risk detection, cancer detection/prevention and mental health
• To roll up wearable data summaries into an overall summary of “wealth health”

Our second challenge is to find innovative, cost-effective & potentially non-invasive ways to measure applicant health without the need for an in-person exam to use in the underwriting process.  Significant mortality and morbidity risk factors that can be difficult to verify without an exam include:

• Height/weight
• Resting heart rate
• Blood pressure
• Substance use – tobacco (and history thereof), alcohol, other potentially harmful drugs
• Kidney health
• Liver health

Our third challenge is around client perception of their data use & privacy.

Some customers may mistakenly view data collection within wellness programs that we offer as something that could work against their insurability and/or privacy. Anonymized, aggregate data allows the company to better understand policyowners’ health and behaviors as well as their interests in different types of wellness offerings.  Eligibility for wellness offerings will often be based on factors that are available in anonymized policyowner data.  How do we transparently position data collection so that clients understand we are using it in an anonymous fashion to gain insights into general consumer behavior as well as for their personal benefit?  We want policyowners to understand and have confidence that, within these wellness programs, we are not gathering individualized data that could be used in any way that puts them at a disadvantage for purchasing insurance products or other risk-based products in the future.

We are a global healthcare company, founded in 1923 and headquartered just outside Copenhagen, Denmark.

Our purpose is to drive change to defeat serious chronic diseases, built upon our heritage in diabetes. We do so by pioneering scientific breakthroughs, expanding access to our medicines and working to provide therapeutic options to prevent and ultimately cure the diseases we treat.

Defeating diabetes and other serious chronic diseases is not something we can do alone, and we continuously seek new partners with whom we share complementary capabilities and mutual interests. We work in close collaboration with leading universities, start-ups and biotech companies worldwide to innovate and accelerate new drug discovery.

We are seeking new technologies (including digital tools) and methods for discovering and developing innovative medicines within diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular, rare blood, and endocrine diseases. One of our key focus areas is to enable targeting of specific organs and tissues that can lead to the development of precision therapeutics and making them accessible to patients throughout the world.

Point32Health is seeking innovative solutions to enhance the management of total cost of care while improving patient outcomes and health equity. As a leading nonprofit health and wellbeing organization, Point32Health is committed to delivering high-quality, affordable healthcare to its diverse membership base of 2.2 million individuals. The challenge aims to explore new products, services, and technologies that address complex and costly challenges in healthcare access, management, and delivery.

Specifically, Point32Health is interested in:

1. Value-Based Care Innovations: Solutions that enhance value-based care models, focusing on disease prevention, chronic condition management, and healthy lifestyles, as demonstrated in their collaboration with VillageMD to expand access to primary care.
2. Cost Management Initiatives: Tools or platforms that can aid in medical cost management, control of pharmacy costs, and reducing COVID-19 related expenses, aligning with Point32Health’s recent improvements in operating results through such initiatives.
3. Social Determinants of Health: Innovations that address social determinants and promote equitable access to care, ensuring comprehensive support for diverse communities.
4. Data-Driven Insights: Technologies that provide actionable insights through high-quality data analytics to support integrated care management and drive population health management across care continuums.

Point32Health seeks startups that can deliver real, scalable impact in these areas, aligning with their mission to guide and empower healthier lives for everyone.

For more context, Point32Health’s ongoing efforts in medical cost management and partnerships for value-based care are evident in their collaborations and financial strategies over recent years. These efforts aim to provide better healthcare experiences while managing costs effectively.

Point32Health is dedicated to transforming healthcare delivery by addressing the total cost of care in critical areas such as oncology, diabetes, musculoskeletal health, and health equity. We are seeking innovative solutions that leverage technology, data, and patient-centered approaches to reduce costs while enhancing outcomes for our diverse membership.

Key Focus Areas:

• Oncology Care Management: Develop solutions that optimize cancer care pathways, reduce treatment costs, and improve patient outcomes. Innovations should focus on early detection, personalized treatment plans, and efficient care coordination to enhance value-based care models.
• Diabetes Management: Propose technologies or platforms that improve diabetes prevention, management, and monitoring. Solutions should aim to reduce complications, enhance patient engagement, and provide real-time data insights to support proactive care.
• Musculoskeletal Health: Create interventions that address the high costs associated with musculoskeletal disorders. Innovations should promote preventative care, rehabilitation, and effective management of chronic conditions to improve quality of life and reduce overall expenses.
• Health Equity: Address social determinants of health and promote equitable access to care for underserved populations. Solutions should focus on eliminating disparities in healthcare access, outcomes, and costs across different demographic groups.

Takeda is committed to advancing healthcare innovation that minimizes the environmental impact of our products and operations, including through our ambition to reach net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in our operations by 2035 and across our value chain by 2040. To advance this commitment with a focus on downstream impacts, we are seeking groundbreaking solutions to minimize the GHG emissions associated with the disposal of regulated medical waste, including pharmaceutical product packaging, plastics and other single-use materials utilized as a part of the patient experience. As a leader in the pharmaceutical industry, we recognize that a more sustainable sector will only be possible through the collaborative development of circular economy models and value chains to enable the reuse and recycling of medical products and materials. This challenge invites startups currently outside our own value chain to develop sustainable, scalable methods that align with Takeda’s dedication to both patient care and environmental sustainability.

About Takeda
Takeda is focused on creating better health for people and a brighter future for the world. We aim to discover and deliver life-transforming treatments in our core therapeutic and business areas, including gastrointestinal and inflammation, rare diseases, plasma-derived therapies, oncology, neuroscience and vaccines. Together with our partners, we aim to improve the patient experience and advance a new frontier of treatment options through our dynamic and diverse pipeline. As a leading values-based, R&D-driven biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Japan, we are guided by our commitment to patients, our people and the planet. Our employees in approximately 80 countries and regions are driven by our purpose and are grounded in the values that have defined us for more than two centuries. For more information, visit www.takeda.com.

At Vertex, we invest in scientific innovation to create transformative medicines for people with serious diseases with a focus on specialty markets. We strike at the core of serious diseases to change people’s lives. Bringing together the brightest minds, investing in science and taking smart risks, we go all in. For the lives we have changed and for those who are still waiting, we will never stop fighting until we discover cures. Vertex is interested in solutions that improve how patients capture the frequency and severity of severe hypoglycemic events and share that information with their health care providers to improve patient outcomes.

HEALTHCARE COMMUNITY COLLABORATORS

Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability.

Accenture Life Sciences combines unmatched experience and specialized capabilities across the Life Sciences value chain serving a world-class portfolio of clients globally. We bring continuous innovation to help clients in Biopharma and MedTech to improve their performance and create lasting value across their enterprises.

Accenture’s partnership with MassChallenge strives to build mutually enriching connections between Cohort members, Partners, Collaborators, and the Accenture community.

Boston Children’s Hospital’s Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator (IDHA) is helping shape the future of pediatric healthcare by incubating new technologies, collaborating with industry leaders & novel startups, and deploying digital health solutions across the enterprise.

For 2024, IDHA continues to focus their efforts on innovations that support unmet needs of the pediatric patient population. This year, IDHA is particularly interested in collaborating with AI/ML startups that can help us decrease administrative task burden on staff and help provide a consistent, connected care experience for patients and families both on campus at Boston Children’s Hospital and at home. Additionally, IDHA is still exploring solutions that help to extend pediatric care beyond hospital walls via remote patient monitoring (RPM), care at home, and remote diagnostics. IDHA believes that a robust and integrated RPM portfolio can positively impact health equity across experience, access, and outcomes.

Innovation Centre Denmark (ICDK) Boston, a partnership between the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, is intensifying its efforts in 2024 to support novel technologies, with a particular focus on health and life sciences. This year, we have forged a new collaboration with Novo Nordisk Research and Early Development and joined forces with MassChallenge to nurture Danish innovation in the US.

Denmark has a rich legacy of life science and health innovation. Through our HealthTech program, we aim to support and accelerate innovative solutions that address critical health challenges. We believe that for innovation to thrive, diverse global stakeholders must collaborate, creating a supportive ecosystem for growth.

As we look ahead, ICDK Boston remains dedicated to fostering innovation, facilitating cross-border collaboration, and driving global impact. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and are committed to supporting transformative innovations in health and life sciences through the MassChallenge Healthcare program.

Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic healthcare system, one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations, and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. We connect a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. As a non-profit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community, we want to support our digital innovation community for the benefit of patients everywhere.

Mass General Brigham is committed to:

• Leveraging emerging technology to alleviate clinician burnout, bolster strategic care delivery programs across the system and ensure safe, efficient, and equitable patient care.
• Expanding access and delivering technology-enabled world class clinical care to patients in the comfort of their homes, by establishing the national standard for Home Hospital care.
• Reducing health inequities in key conditions of hypertension, substance use disorder, maternal health, and cancer and ensuring person-centric care by improving screening for social needs.
• Improving access to care for patients by creating a robust digital experience for prospective and existing patients across all engagement channels.
• Enabling and empowering researchers with seamless access to data, cloud, and novel technologies, supported by experts and underpinned with efficient research systems, to sustain our position as a world leader in research and innovation.
• Fostering an inclusive workplace for all Mass General Brigham employees grounded in respect and well-being. Provide simplified, intuitive, and frictionless systems for all employees, extended workers, managers, candidates, and new hires.

Additional Healthcare Community Collaborators