The Mass eHealth Institute (MeHI) at Mass Tech https://mehi.masstech.org has announced that $165,950 in new awards from the Massachusetts Digital Health Sandbox Grant Program is going to go to four Massachusetts startups.
The goal is to support R&D testing opportunities for growing health tech startups. The funding will help start-ups gain access to cutting edge R&D facilities across the state, and then work with the facilities to test and validate a range of their products to get their products to market.
MeHI at the Mass Tech collaborative is in place to provide healthcare innovation, technology, and competitiveness, and works with industry, government, and healthcare organizations to support the Massachusetts Digital Health Initiative.
The Sandbox program was launched in 2019 to boost the digital health ecosystem under the Massachusetts Digital Health Initiative. The Digital Health Sandbox Network across the state, provides facilities to test a range of digital health products.
The four selected projects include:
- UMass Amherst Institute of Applied Life Sciences (IALS) will receive $50,000 to work with Thriving ai on an online platform to supports and actively engage elders to help them live independently longer and reduce loneliness and isolation by bringing together healthcare, social care, family caregivers, and other care professionals onto a single platform
- MITRE will receive $47,200 to co-develop and provide an implementation guide for FHIR-based consent portability. Tranquil Data will work with MITRE to develop the implementation guide to enable NextGen Interoperability through exchange of consents and related patient members and then provide healthcare consumer data to help payers meet the CMS payer-to-payer data exchange requirement. Tranquil Data will develop and test their consent management solution using the implementation guide to enable the exchange of consents and related metadata
- X-Sight Inc. will receive $43,750 to support X-Sight’s development of a digital and programmable 3D X-Ray imaging platform which will include a hardware platform to enable digital health solutions such as telemedicine and point-of-care treatment. The grant will fund a membership to Practice Point at WPI to provide access to cutting edge testing suites. X-Sight will also be able to engage with clinicians to validate their use care and to define their product specifications
- A $25,000 grant will go to TechSpring, Baystate Health’s innovation hub to allow Health Together to improve and build on their moderated online peer-to-peer platform to help patients and family caregivers increase their physical and mental health. Health Together will work with TechSpring to conduct a design audit and usability testing to guide the development of the mental health section of the platform
“The facilities within the Sandbox Network offer infrastructure and testing capabilities by providing options for growing companies to choose what will work best for them”, said Ben Linville-Engler, Chief Investment Strategist at the Mass Tech Collaborative MeHI’s parent agency.
Go to https://massdigitalhealth.org/sandbox-network for more information on the Massachusetts Digital Health Initiative