We strongly believe in the power of a collaborative ecosystem

Innovation is change - it requires effort, generates resistance, needs vision and leadership. Innovation is the application of ideas that are novel and useful. Creativity, the ability to generate novel and useful ideas, is the seed of innovation but unless it’s applied and scaled it’s still just an idea.

Opening up the innovation process to all active players is the basic premise of?Open Innovation. Open Innovation is defined as the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. The most forward thinking corporates know that the best ideas don’t always come from within their own business.?External ideas and technologies are brought into the organisations own innovation process. Knowledge can circulate more freely and be transformed into products and services that create new markets, fostering a stronger culture of entrepreneurship.?If we define Open Innovation as innovating with partners, organisations have always practiced it by working closely with partners from their close networks: selected customers, suppliers, universities and research institutions. Once Open Innovation is adopted, the organisations boundaries become permeable and that allows combining the company resources with external co-operators.

We are currently undergoing a revolution in technology. We are at the doorstep of a transformation in healthcare. Artificial Intelligence is going to make healthcare technology smart and with this we start the age of true Digital Health. AI can create better data, drive better quality, drive better outcomes, drive more time for providers to spend with their patients and push insights directly to the point of care, which is less and less defined by physical location.

We, at GE Healthcare, strongly believe in the power of a collaborative ecosystem to foster open innovation and the digital transformation of healthcare.

The global health crisis that the world is experiencing is putting healthcare systems under immense pressure and exposed some of their most gaping problems. It has also demonstrated the critical need to reimagine how healthcare is delivered and accelerated the pace of change – what would previously have taken the industry years to implement is now taking months.?And this is happening through collaborations across the healthcare ecosystem.

The right corporate–startup collaborations are hugely beneficial for both sides, but can be difficult to pull off. Corporates need to think hard about how to approach these innovation partnerships systematically, rather than relying on individuals to take the initiative. Startups and large companies bring each other immense opportunities through collaborations that, if harnessed correctly, create win–win situations. More and more accelerators are becoming specialised and focused on certain industries, segments or growth stages. Attracting specialised mentors, investors and consultants, combined with providing an adjusted acceleration program can bring additional value to the startup ecosystem. That’s why building a successful startup accelerator today requires you to select the right strategic focus, and this is one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make.?

Few other industries are as complex, comprehensive and fascinating as healthcare. Collaboration and co-creation between a corporate and startups is not enough in the healthcare space. Traditional corporate accelerators do not work in healthcare.?

Together with our partner?Wayra UK, we have launched the Edison?Accelerator. A startup acceleration & healthcare provider collaboration program. It provides Healthcare AI startups what they are lacking: Access to healthcare data, validated problem statements, access to HCPs, clinical mentoring and a chance to run pilots and POCs. This is what makes it unique. Beside GE and the startups, the 3rd?key stakeholder in the program are healthcare provider institutions.

The program is co-designed with healthcare provider institutions, such as?Alliance Medical,?Ribera Salud,?EMRAD?and?Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust?to empower and enable Healthcare AI startups to accelerate innovative solutions to address the new challenges to the healthcare sector.

We provide startups with access to GE Healthcare’s?Edison?platform - an intelligence platform designed to help achieve greater efficiency, improve patient outcomes, and increase access to care.

The future of innovation will be about working across silos and collaborating across the healthcare ecosystem, including startups, research centres, hospitals, clinicians, patients and large corporations. While AI has already achieved widespread adoption in certain sectors, the complexities of healthcare have resulted in slower adoption. Let’s work on that.

Learn more about our 2021 program.

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