Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts will provide $50,000 in seed capital to each of 10 health services startups that are part of the Healthbox incubator in Cambridge.
The emerging companies are focused on wellness, patient engagement and helping doctors better manage their practices.
Nina Nashif, founder of Healthbox, said in a news release that the company is “thrilled to be partnering with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts who has embraced our vision of supporting health care entrepreneurs and unlocking the industry knowledge needed to build game-changing companies.”
Along with the seed capital, the Healthbox companies will receive access to a mentor network of industry experts including BCBSMA employees, strategic guidance and collaborative workspace. The program launches this month and will culminate in a November conference where the startups can pitch investors.
“Participating in the development of new solutions that aim to tackle the most pressing challenges in the industry supports our mission to make quality health care affordable for individuals, families and employers while adding growth to our local economy,” Blue Cross CEO Andrew Dreyfus said in the news release.
The 10 companies are as follows:
- Aavya Health, which is developing lab results software
- Abiogenix, which is developing an intelligent pillbox to improve medication adherence
- GeckoCap, which is developing an asthma monitoring program
- Uprise Medical, which is developing software to help physicians educate patients about their condition
- iQuartric, which aggregates real-time electronic medical record data from across multiple clinical care settings
- Gweepi Medical, which is creating an intelligent moisture-sensor for nursing homes
- Smart Scheduling, which developed software designed to solve the problems of no-shows and overbooking for doctors’ appointments
- Yosko, which created technology for on-the-go access to patient records for doctors
- Bon’App, which developed a mobile app to providenutrition information and track eating patterns
- Healthy Delivery, which offers healthy meals and groceries for home delivery
Blue Cross — along with pharmacy benefits provider Express Scripts and venture capital firms HLM Venture Partners and Long River Ventures — are strategic partners with Healthbox, which was launched earlier this year
via Blue Cross to seed 10 Healthbox startups with $500K – Boston Business Journal.