Executives from the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership (MACP) http://masscompetes.org recently joined leaders from state government, healthcare and the technology sector at Boston Children’s Hospital to announce a comprehensive public-private partnership to accelerate the state’s digital healthcare industry. According to a report by Goldman Sachs the digital health/eHealth market represents approximately $32 billion market opportunity over the next decade.
Massachusetts is well positioned for success in this market, as the state is host to many healthcare and academic institutions, has a strong startup culture, invests in significant venture capital, and has a dominant life sciences sector with roughly 250 existing digital health companies.
To support digital health/eHealth startups, the City of Boston, the Massachusetts eHealth Institute at Mass Tech (MeHI) http://mehi.masstech.org and MACP have established a digital health innovation hub. This initiative will provide space, programming plus an industry network for digital health startups. It will also serve as a Boston hub for the industry with programming through the hub to be managed and operated by MassChallenge http://masschallenge.org.
MACP also announced several industry-led initiatives that will provide private funds for digital healthcare companies that are starting up and are located in or planning to relocate to Massachusetts.
MACP has developed standardized software, technology and is sponsoring research agreements and user guides to make it easier for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and the private sector to do business with the University of Massachusetts System, Harvard University, MIT, Northeastern University, and Partners HealthCare.
MACP will host a second year of the Mentorship Speaker Series concentrating on connecting high level experienced industry leaders across the state with entrepreneurs from emerging companies to discuss how to start and grow a successful tech business in the State.
The Governor of Massachusetts Charlie Baker and Housing and Economic Development Secretary Jay Ash have designated MeHI as the state’s implementing agency to promote and accelerate the use of digital healthcare such as EHRs and the HIE.
MeHI will not only co-invest in the digital healthcare hub in Boston, but will also lead the development of a market access program by building strategic connections between entrepreneurs and the healthcare system and partner with state agencies to capture the big data opportunity in healthcare. The Governor has also announced that he will file legislation to expand MeHI’s efforts to include digital healthcare cluster development activities.