MassChallenge HealthTech combines the power of innovation and entrepreneurship to advance scalable digital 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.
In 2022, the MassChallenge HealthTech and our industry-leading partners are dedicated, more than ever, to accelerate the pace of innovation—but we need your help.
MassChallenge is seeking groundbreaking startups to join us in our efforts to solve health issues like health equity, behavioral health, virtual health services 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.
2022 MassChallenge HealthTech Partner Challenge Statements
(click to go to the challenge)
Boston Children’s Hospital | The Brigham Digital Innovation Hub (iHub) | City of Boston’s Office Economic Development | Harvard Pilgrim Health Care | Department of Health and Human Services | Massachusetts General Hospital | MassMutual | Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (MCB) | MITRE
Boston Children’s Hospital’s Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator (IDHA) is helping shape the future of pediatric health care by incubating new technologies, collaborating with industry leaders & novel startups, and deploying digital health solutions across the enterprise.
For 2022, 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 startups that are helping to extend pediatric care beyond hospital walls via remote patient monitoring (RPM). IDHA believes that a robust and integrated RPM portfolio can positively impact health equity across experience, access, and outcomes.
The Brigham Digital Innovation Hub (iHub) is the center for digital health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The iHub is excited to continue the spread of digital innovation through partnerships with MCHT startups.
This year we are focused on increasing equity and access through digital solutions, improving the hospital at home experience, and exploring cutting-edge, emerging technologies in care delivery with AR/VR and drones. With our front line exposure implementing digital health, the iHub has robust infrastructure and processes in place to enable pilots of market-ready digital solutions to meet hospital needs and drive mutual success.
The City of Boston’s Office Economic Development pushes forward initiatives focusing on sustainable community and economic development, while fostering inclusion and equity for all Bostonians. One of the immediate symptoms of COVID-19 is the disproportionate impact of the virus on our communities of color.
Last year the City of Boston declared racism a public health crisis, and since then, the administration founded the Covid-19 Health Inequities Task Force whose sole charge is to identify strategies that can be implemented to support of finding a partner who can leverage the power of innovation and collaboration to help us in the fight against injustice and inequality in social determinants of health.
With the help of community and healthcare stakeholders and partners like Mass Challenge, the City of Boston would like to tackle these challenges for a more equitable and healthy Boston. We present the challenge of finding a partner who can leverage the power of innovation and collaboration to help us in the fight against injustice and inequality in social determinants of health.
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has been a MCHT Champion since 2017. Now, as part of Point32Health, a not-for-profit health plan serving over 2.2 Million members across New England, they are looking to work with digital health startups to enhance their 4-part value proposition: improve affordability, increase access, improve quality of health, and streamline the customer experience.
For the 2021 program the main areas of focus include population health and member engagement, two areas that reinforce their commitment to help guide members to better health.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
At the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, InnovationX unites inspired collaborators to develop transformative solutions to today’s most pressing healthcare challenges through the use of technology and data. Collaborating with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and other HHS agencies, InnovationX is a team of doers reimagining and redefining what’s possible. InnovationX is excited to participate in this year’s program, focused on harnessing the power of data and the innovation community to address inequity, create a culture of partnership for shared success, and deploy resources to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are looking to engage tech-focused collaborators to share cutting-edge data-driven solutions designed to combat public health crises occurring nationwide since 2020, with the potential to be used and shared among federal agencies and communities across the U.S.
Strategic Areas of Interest for Startup Sourcing:
- SDOH and Health Equity by Design (CDC, OASH, ONC)
- Behavioral and Mental Health (ACF, CDC, OASH, ONC)
- Virtual Care (ACF, FDA, HRSA, ONC, CMS)
- Access to Care (ACF, CDC, HRSA, CMS)
- Price Transparency (OASH, CMS)
- Remote Monitoring/Testing (FDA, HRSA)
- Interoperability (FDA, ONC, CDC, CMS)
Challenge #1: Health Equity by Design
HHS would like to engage with startups who are developing technical solutions specifically designed to mitigate inequities in the access to, delivery, and/or quality of healthcare, or at least are deliberately factoring in these considerations into the design and development of their solution or services from the beginning.
Challenge #2:National Public Health Solutions
By identifying the top public health needs identified since January 2020, HHS would like to source startups to create a combination of community, environmental, and clinical solutions, including identifying scorecard indicators for success using public health solutions.
Challenge #3: Behavioral, Mental, Violence Prevention
HHS would like to team up with startups that can offer connections to behavioral and mental health resources and violence prevention resources at a local municipality, regional or national level.
Challenge #4: Socioeconomic Outcome Indicators
HHS would like to stratify economic income differences based on county and create visuals featuring the primary industry areas in the most low-income counties, highlighting the most impacted industries since January 2020.
Challenge #5: Community Resilience
HHS would like to team up with startups that utilize and exchange data targeted at supporting resiliency at a local municipality level and can address key public health challenges that have been exacerbated during the pandemic, including but not limited to suicide, invisible illnesses, domestic violence, substance abuse, and trauma.
Massachusetts General Hospital has a long and consistent history of innovation, and continues to lead in the digital health space – from strategic alliances and co-developing new solutions, to nurturing early stage healthcare technology companies.
The MGH Center for Innovation in Digital Healthcare (CIDH) works with entrepreneurs and startup companies who understand the complexities of working with an academic medical center such as Mass General and are fearless in addressing critical challenges that face the healthcare industry today. In the year ahead, CIDH is focused on virtual care solutions and solving health equities by expanding access to quality care. In addition, as care delivery becomes more integrated with digital health innovation, another key priority is to leverage technological advances to improve clinical workflow efficiency and reduce administrative burden.
At MassMutual our unwavering focus is – and will continue to be – helping people secure their future and protect the ones they love. We’re a mutual company, which means we’re owned by our policyowners – so everything we do is focused on our customers. We provide holistic financial solutions, guidance, and education in the way our customers want to engage with us, on their terms – whether in person, online, at the workplace or over the phone. We offer a wide range of financial products and services, including life insurance, protection products, retirement, and investment solutions to help people achieve their financial goals.
Overall, we are focusing on underwriting efficiency and customer experience. How can we challenge the underwriting process by using alternative data sources, methods and processes to better assess risk while also doing it faster and less invasively for applicants.
Our first challenge is how to comprehensively assess risk while also making the process fast, frictionless and non-invasive for our clients and their advisors. The most important piece is improving our fluidless underwriting model and gaining faster access to client information. The process of having labs drawn and meeting with a paramedical examiner is a tough hurdle for the insurance industry; we can make this process simpler for clients and remove the invasive process in the life cycle to get people covered faster.
- Ideally we would like to move to more dynamic Underwriting- Underwriting to clients’ risk footprints as opposed to the traditional age and amount requirements that are used in the industry.
Our second challenge surrounds access to and sharing of client data/information. Often times the release of information can be cumbersome and time consuming for the client requiring multiple forms, signatures and more. With the increased reliance on digital and non-traditional data sources, the more this release process becomes an issue for us and the industry.
Lastly, as the insurance industry becomes more regulated and new data sources become more available, how do we ensure that we are not introducing unintended bias into the underwriting process? For example, underwriting based on socioeconomic factors that could result in using inaccurate data points. These challenges help us question the status quo of underwriting/health evaluation by gaining efficiencies and reducing timelines and costs while also reimaging the client experience during the life and disability purchasing process, ultimately allowing us to reach more Americans.
Live Mutual – Stand by you | Live Mutual – Dreams | Live Mutual – Legacy
Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (MCB), founded in 1906, is one of the oldest blindness agencies in the United States, with Helen Keller serving as one of the first Commissioners. MCB provides high-quality rehabilitation and social services leading to independence and self-determination for individuals who are blind, visually impaired, and DeafBlind across the Commonwealth with the support of stakeholders such as Perkins School for the Blind and The Carroll Center for the Blind. MCB is looking for partners who will provide innovative solutions for our community to work and thrive, including a specific focus on technology access for older adults. Additionally,
MCB is looking to sponsor a grant for a project that aligns with our mission and goals and would like to capitalize on the emergence of telehealth as a diagnostic tool to provide remote MCB assessment and diagnostic services.
MITRE’s mission-driven teams are dedicated to solving problems for a safer world. Through our public-private partnerships and federally funded R&D centers, we work across government and in partnership with industry to tackle challenges to the safety, stability, and well-being of our nation.
MITRE is an operator of the Health Federally-funded R&D center and we work closely with many federal agencies including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
We are looking forward to partnering with organizations who are developing and rolling out innovative healthcare solutions that promote health equity. We are engaged deeply in the health equity discussions taking place at the federal level and would like to offer our subject matter expertise in health equity, publicly-funded healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid, long-term care, telehealth, analytics, care coordination, and value-based care.