S8: #073: Anne Wellington on the Success and Growth of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator

After graduating four classes and 37 companies, this leading accelerator is breaking new ground. Again. In this episode we’re talking about accelerators. Accelerators have been around since about 2005 and in the last 5 or 6 years, we’ve seen the development of new accelerators and programs that focus on the unique needs of entrepreneurs who are working to create new solutions for the healthcare sector. Accelerators are designed to accelerate the development of the ideas and solutions that will make the biggest impact, and, as we will hear about on this episode, they also accelerate failure so that entrepreneurs and investors can save valuable time and resources and apply their talents to other solutions. To get the low-down on what accelerators do to succeed, we reached out to the managing director of one of the best-known health-focused accelerators, Anne Wellington. Anne is the managing director of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator in Los Angeles. She’s been a part of the accelerator since March 2016, and she shares insights on their experiences as a healthcare organization working at the leading, bleeding edge of health innovation. Anne also shares some of the changes underway at Cedars-Sinai, and the opportunities available for startups in their upcoming 2019 class. We know of course that things operate differently in healthcare, and governments, universities, corporations, investors, and even hospital systems have created special programs to provide the resources, access and environment to help startups create the products and services that are changing the face of healthcare. We also have a page in our Resources area that covers some of the programs that are available to help startups. There are several organizations and links listed on that page and we also have other episodes of this podcast where we spoke with some of other leaders from these programs including the podcasts we’ve done with Eugene Borukhovich from Bayer G4A, Fred Toney of Launchpad Digital Health, and Christian Seale from Startup Bootcamp. Tune in to this episode to hear Anne's perspective on how Cedars-Sinai Accelerator is creating winning solutions and startups. Today's Topics: The broad scope of work surrounding Cedar-Sinai as a health care provider The genesis of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator program The range of solutions that participate and benefit from accelerators How Cedars-Sinai works as an advocate for startups The key lessons she learned working in an Accelerator program, addressing the challenges along the way and best practices The future plans for Cedars-Sinai Accelerator Applications for class five are open until Feb 15, 2019! Links and Resources Mentioned: Anne Wellington on Twitter Anne Wellington on LinkedIn Cedars-Sinai Accelerator on Twitter Cedars-Sinai Accelerator on LinkedIn Cedars-Sinai Accelerator on the Web Techstars on Twitter Techstars on LinkedIn Podcast with Eugene Borukhovich from Bayer G4A Podcast with Fred Toney of Launchpad Digital Health Podcast with Christian Seale from Startup Bootcamp Sopris Health Kela Health Alis Health CardioCube MedPilot Nicolette Relatable SureConsent Digital Medical Tech Digital Health Events Join Digital Health Today This episode of Digital Health Today is made possible thanks to our sponsors. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices